Leaf
by Slavok
Summary: When an expedition through Shadesmar goes awry, Lift finds herself stuck on earth. Fortunately, between the capes, the crime, and the local cuisine, she finds more than enough to keep her occupied.
1. Chapter 1

Leaf

Chapter One

Miss Militia studied the prisoner through the one-way mirror in the interrogation room. The girl was about Vista's age with long black hair, a round face, and big brown eyes. She looked Hispanic, though Miss Militia couldn't say for certain.

If it weren't for the villain label on her prisoner uniform, Miss Militia wouldn't have looked at her twice.

"So this is Leaf," she stated.

Leaf had been about a minor a villain as villains could be, even compared to people like Uber and Leet. She had a gimmick where she would only steal food, robbing pastry shops and country clubs. With a kill count and an injury count of zero each, the Protectorate would have never gotten involved with her if she hadn't tried to rob the PHQ.

Miss Militia had been out on patrol when it happened, but what kind of neurosis drove someone to rob the PHQ? Apparently Leaf had gotten pretty far, too. Assault claimed to have found her in the break room with her nose in the fridge asking for the location of "the good stuff" before she tried to escape.

A blood test later suggested that Leaf was not, as was initially assumed, on drugs.

Armsmaster nodded beside her. "We will try to recruit her into the Wards. And by we I mean you. I ... I expect that I may lose my temper."

Miss Militia nodded slowly. Armsmaster could remain professional when dealing with villains like Lung or Kaiser, but the juvenile D-rank villain had embarrassed the entire Protectorate when she had attempted to rob their headquarters, and as the leader of the Protectorate East-Northeast, Armsmaster felt the shame twice over.

"Would she join the Wards here or would she be transferred to another branch?"

"She has kept a low enough profile to stay here with minimal rebranding. And ... I would rather keep this matter in house."

She nodded again. "Why me for the recruitment?" Usually Wards recruited Wards, and she hadn't been a member for over a decade. "Wouldn't she be more receptive to someone closer to her own age?"

"If she were an independent hero, I'd agree with you," he said. "Her actions so far have been frivolous, and it will not matter how much she likes us if she doesn't respect us. Afterward, we can worry about getting her some _friends."_

He said the word as though he had read it in a book somewhere. Miss Militia could empathize with the sentiment. Being a hero in Brockton Bay was often a matter of life and death. Enjoying the company of one's teammates was secondary to having teammates who would do their job.

"Besides," he continued, "she is, as far as I know, a homeless orphan, and you are a woman approximately one generation older than she is. She may respond favorably to a maternal presence."

Miss Militia didn't exactly appreciate the way he phrased that, but she knew him too well to take offense. Armsmaster insulted people directly and he praised them directly without anything in between.

"And she is a Mover 2, Shaker 1 with phytokinesis?"

"She's received a Breaker designation as well," Armsmaster said. "She can negate the effects of friction, making her immune to air resistance and allowing her to slide on the ground at high speeds, and she can make plants grow in a small area around her. Not the most impressive powerset, but ..."

But she had snuck into the PHQ and it had taken Assault, Battery, Velocity, and Armsmaster to pin her down. Her powers weren't useful in a fight, but she could move, as her cape name implied, like a leaf in the wind.

WWW

"You can't keep doing this, Mistress," Wyndle whined, growing along the walls. "Haven't I warned you that this would happen? But no matter what I say, you always go looking for trouble, and do you know what? You found it."

Lift looked around the small room she was in. "Really? Don't see it." Sure, she had gotten arrested, but that was part of the risk that made stealing fun. She could leave any time she wanted to. When she made herself Slick no one could grab onto her, which was fun, but the real trick was making other stuff Slick. A locked door? No problem. Either it unlocked itself, or the screws popped out. Honestly, she wasn't sure why they bothered putting her in handcuffs.

And that wasn't even including using Wyndle as a Shardblade. If she did that, breaking out of here would be so easy it would be nearly cheating.

The door opened and a woman in green walked in. "Good morning" she said, sitting down across from her. "How are you feeling?"

"Kind of hungry," Lift said. "Got anything to eat?" Honestly, the only reason she hadn't broken out already was because she figured that if she was going to be arrested, she might as well get a free meal out of it.

"I'll see if I can have anything sent over to your cell. In the meantime, there are a few things I'd like to discuss with you, Leaf. It is alright if I call you Leaf, isn't?"

"It's Lift," she said. Why did everyone call her Leaf? Sure, she could make plants grow, but she lifted things way more often.

"Lift, then."

Lift nodded. "Who are you?"

The woman hesitated. She had the lower half of her face covered, but her eyes looked surprised. "Miss Militia. I take it you don't follow the cape scene, Lift. I find that odd, considering your profession."

Lift shrugged. "I've worn capes before. Turns out they make me look silly."

She was joking, of course. Capes were what they called people who were awesome around here. Kind of a silly name, but easier to say than Surgebinder or Knight Radiant.

"I see. Well let's get down to business, shall we? First off, I understand you have waived your right to legal council. Is that correct?"

Lift looked up at her. "How'm I supposed to wave? My hands are tied up."

"No, I mean that you have decided that you do not want a lawyer."

"What's a lawyer?" she asked. She knew she had heard that term before. "Can you eat it?"

"No," Militia said. "A lawyer is someone who understands the ins and outs of the legal system, and can give you advice."

"Oh!" Azimir was practically the kingdom of lawyers, but they called them things like scribes, viziers, scions, and a whole bunch of other names for people with big words and bigger robes. Lift just called 'em noodles. "We got those where I'm from too. Do yours come with funny hats?"

"No. They do not."

"Aw." Their hats were the best things about them. "Nevermind then. There's not much point to having a lawyer without a funny hat."

"Is there anyone you would like notified about your situation?" Militia asked. "A parent or legal guardian we could contact to let them know that you are safe?"

Lift thought for a moment. Lift knew she was safe, but she hadn't expected Militia to know that. "Nah. My parents are ways away. Besides, they're both dead."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

She shrugged. "Don't be. If they weren't, they'd be missing bits. And they'd smell _really_ bad."

"I ... see." She seemed nice, Lift decided. Most people were, but after you started working for the law you were supposed to try your starvin' best not to be.

The combat knife at Militia's hip turned into a ball of green energy, then into a small gun. They didn't have guns back home, and she couldn't get Wyndle to turn into one. Two many little parts. He could turn into a bow without the arrow (or the string) or an arrow without the bow, but he couldn't be both.

Militia glanced down at her gun, turned it into a sabre, and set it on the table between them. Within arm's reach, even. Militia looked at the big mirror—there were people on the other side, and Wyndle'd told her that they could see through it like a window—and Lift reached over, slipping her cuffs, and grabbed it.

It wasn't a Shardblade, even if it could change shape like one. Definitely still alive; it hummed a bit. She held it up to her ear to see if she could hear anything. "What's his name?"

Militia watched her, not exactly concerned—she could probably call her weapon to her hand as quickly as Lift could call Wyndle—but certainly more cautious. "It doesn't have a name."

"Don't he talk to you?" Lift was certain that he was a he. That was just the way things worked. Boys got girl weapons and girls got boy weapons.

"Mistress," Wyndle said, "I am ... ninety percent sure that is not a spren, not in the sense you're thinking of."

Lift ignored him, not that she could talk to him at all right now without sounding crazy.

"No," Militia answered.

"Huh. Mine never stops whining."

"That is _not_ true!"

Militia frowned, giving Lift the same look grown-ups always did when she told the truth and they still didn't believe her. Lift didn't mind. If they were a bit more credulous, she'd have to lie more, and that was just too much work. "By way of proceeding, do you understand the charges placed before you?"

"Uh, sure, it's ..." She glanced down at Wyndle. He had a good head for boring stuff, even though he didn't have a head at all.

"Theft, trespassing, breaking and entering," he said.

"Right! Thievin', going where I ain't supposed to, and breaking entrances." She frowned. "I never broke nothin', so you can't accuse me of that."

"Normally you would be sent into the foster care system after a short stay in a juvenile detention center, but as a parahuman, the situation is more severe."

Lift looked up at that. Foster care? That meant you got a fake family. She gripped Militia's sword handle tightly, but she didn't say anything.

"Any detention center holding you would be designed for parahumans, and any foster family willing to take you in would need to be informed of your abilities. It is difficult for young criminals to find foster parents willing to take them in, and for young villains it is nearly impossible. It is quite possible that you could remain in the detention center until you turn eighteen."

Wyndle began to moan, though Lift couldn't tell what his problem was. She had never been sent to prison before, but she had broken out more of her fellow thieves than she could count, like, _ten_. Breaking herself out would be a piece of cake compared to figuring out how starvin' old she was.

"Okay."

Militia gave her the second most common look adults gave her, which said that she didn't appreciate her levity. "Your other option is to join the Wards as a junior hero. You would stay in the Wards HQ until a suitable foster family could be found, and you would be enrolled in school ... does this amuse you, Lift?"

Lift tried to hold back her laughter before giving up entirely, but as soon as she stopped trying not to, the joke wasn't funny anymore. "You want _me_ to be a lawman?"

"It is not so strange. Many former villains have been able to turn their lives around."

Lift shook her head and set Militia's saber back on the table. "What do you think?" she asked Wyndle, not caring if Militia thought she was talking to herself.

Militia glanced at the spot on the wall where Wyndle was, but she couldn't see him. "Um, I think that some structure would be good for you, Mistress, and her offer does seem better than the alternative, but ... but I did not bond a Skybreaker."

Lift nodded, for once in agreement with the mass of vines and crystals that made up her spren. Darkness, the starvin' Herald of Justice himself, hadn't chased her across half a continent to recruit her, that was for sure.

It was like ... it was like the law was a great big gardener, keeping everything in place. That was great if you were a flower or a tomato, but Lift had always been a weed. There wasn't no place in the garden for weeds. There never had been.

"Thanks for the offer," Lift said, "but it ain't for me."

Militia's brow furrowed. "You would rather go to a parahuman detention center than join the Wards? This is not a decision to be made quickly or lightly. Perhaps you would like to speak with one of the current members, Aegis or—"

Lift shook her head. "No, I'm good." She knew who she was. She was a thief, and a starvin' good one, and if Wyndle had anything to say about it, she was an Edgedancer too, one who listened and remembered and ... and did whatever else Edgedancers were sworn to do. Skybreakers and lawmen kept order, but they didn't know how to listen. Darkness couldn't hear his own heart until long after there was nothing left, and Militia had been carrying her weapon around with her for the Almighty knew how long and _still_ didn't know what his name was.

Cain reverted to his green energy form and appeared in Militia's hand as a long, black rifle. "If that is your decision little one, I can't force you. Let me know if you change your mind." She stood up and left, and two people in PRT uniforms put her handcuffs back on and escorted Lift back to her cell.

WWW

Lift's decision wasn't entirely unexpected, but Miss Militia felt disappointed all the same. Miss Militia had been an orphan too when she was younger, and a foster family and the Wards Program were the best things that could have happened to her. If she had made a more impassioned argument ...

But the choice was Lift's and Lift's alone, and if the girl would not cooperate with the PRT, then the PRT would find some other way to use her, as sad as it was. They always needed more heroes, but harmless villains like her gave the heroes someone to practice on without risk. Instead of giving her the help she needed but didn't want, they would put her in a prison they knew she could escape from, then hunt her down and catch her again, and again, and again, all because she was a child too fond of her game to let go of it.

Miss Militia knew the routine well enough to tell how it would end. Lift would spend so much of her life in the chase or in the cage that even when she tired of the game, the game would be all she knew. Eventually her crimes would escalate and she would fight back more viciously to evade capture until when the heroes finally did capture her, they would send her to a prison that she could _not_ escape from. The heroes would congratulate themselves and the people would cheer, all for the arrest of someone who never should never have become a villain in the first place.

All for the sake of a game. Sad, yes, but one day Lift would learn that she couldn't stay a child forever.

WWW

Lift waited until midnight.

She sent Wyndle back and forth to the nearest clock, if only for something to do. She hated waiting. Waiting made her think about things that she'd rather not think about, like that she'd never find a way back home, or that she'd never see her friends again. Sure, she'd been excited to see a different world when she'd left with the queen of Alethkar, but only Jasnah knew enough about Shadesmar to get in and out at will.

Where _was_ she? She had probably made it to Ashyn by now, if she hadn't turned back and returned to Roshar.

Lift looked down at her plate of food. It was some kind of meat-pasta thing with steamed vegetables on the side. She was surprised by the last bit. She wondered if she could bring the plants back to life and attack her enemies with a forest of broccoli.

No, no, that was dumb. She ate her food instead. It had gone cold hours ago, but it filled her stomach.

"Ooh eady?" she asked with her mouth full.

"I've studied the layout of this facility to the best of my ability. The Wards have gone home already, it being a school night, and the building is as empty as it is likely to get. Which, by no means should suggest that you should be careless. The Protectorate still has one of its members on the premises, the one named Battery. You've met her before, so please be careful."

"Ooh, ee?"

"Yes, you. I expect that an alarm will sound as soon as you exit this cell, so I have determined the fastest route to the exit, not the quietest."

Lift swallowed. "Great. And did you find ..."

"Your lucky chip? Unfortunately, no. Your effects seem to have been moved to another location."

"Balls!" She had _liked_ that one! Lift had never gotten used to money, but a bit of light came in handy. Okay, _she_ could glow whenever she wanted to, but still.

Well, that sort of thing happened when you got arrested. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and stood up. "Let's go."

Wyndle appeared in her hand, a long blade of silvery steel, dripping with dew, and Lift cut a hole through her cell wall. Sure enough, a siren started blaring and containment foam started raining down from the ceiling. Containment foam was super sticky, but Lift was awesomely Slick when she wanted to be, and the foam dripped off of her like water.

She ran down the hall, awesomeness trailing behind her like white smoke, and she made her escape.


	2. Chapter 2

Leaf

Chapter Two

Lift woke up hungry, as usual. That was good. Waking up hungry meant that she was just in time for breakfast. She yawned and stretched, accidentally kicking Lady Martha.

There were loads of ladies in Brockton Bay. There were night ladies, street ladies, and bag ladies. Lady Martha was part of the last group, a treasure hunter, and she had a cart to carry all the interesting stuff she found throughout the day. She wore her entire wardrobe at once, then shed it at night to make a nest in the storage locker where she lived.

Lady Martha groaned as she rolled over like she always did. Her hair was gray and greasy and her skin was all leathery. "Lift?" she rasped. "When did you get here?"

"Last night," Lift said, standing up. "Some funny people offered me a job, and it took forever to tell 'em no."

"A job?" She sounded nervous, which Lift got. Jobs were dangerous things. If you spent too much time having people tell you what to do, you forgot how to tell _yourself_ what to do, and then you were in trouble. That's the sort of thing that left you empty in a way that a good breakfast couldn't fix. "Be careful, Lift," she said. "All the money in the world isn't worth doing something you're not proud of."

"I know, I know. That's why I turned them down." Law enforcement. Ha! "You don't need to worry about me."

"But I do." Lady Martha sat up, creaking like she was made of wood. "New shirt?"

Lift looked down at a souvenir she had grabbed on the way out of the PRT building. It was a shirt with a picture on it of Miss Militia and the rest of the city's heroes. It was her size, too, going all the way down to her knees, conveniently covering up the _Villain_ label on the prison sweats she was still wearing.

"Just got it last night," Lift replied. All her clothes were brand new, even her underwear, which Lift was pretty certain was lucky. They had made her take a shower first, but that was a fair trade for lucky underwear in her book.

But Lady Martha frowned. She never wore new clothes, and whenever she got new clothes she traded them for old clothes. New clothes made you look rich and looking rich got you mugged.

Lift agreed with the principle, but if she took off her shirt she'd end up looking like an escaped prisoner—which she was, but there was no point in advertising that. Besides, Lady Martha had no idea how fast Lift could wear out what she wore.

WWW

Most thieves Lift met didn't understand why she stole food instead of money. If you stole food, you could eat for a day, but if you stole money, you could eat for a month.

Yeah, they weren't too smart. If you only stole once a month, could you even call yourself a thief? You might as well just be a tax collector.

No, Lift stole three times a day, worked up an appetite, and ate well. Really, what more could a master thief ask for? She took a handful of potato salad out of her pocket and took a bite.

"Mistress?" Wyndle said, growing vine-faces along the wall beside her. "Are you content?"

She glared at him. "That ain't a nice question."

"I ... I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Ain't no one never content when they're thinking about if they're content."

"So, no."

"Sure I'm content. I'm plenty content." She put the rest of her potato salad back in her pocket. "Mostly."

Wyndle fell silent for a moment. "I only ask because you are, in many ways, a seed. The true seed isn't the seed that stays the same, but the seed that takes root and grows toward the sun. While I've complained about this ... assignment, I've since come to understand that I wasn't bound to you because of what you are, but because of what you might one day become."

Lift stopped and stared at him. "You want me to give up thievin'?"

He sighed. "Yes, but I also think that the evenings would be more aesthetically pleasing if the sun set in the east. But my point is, Mistress, that I realize it is ineffective, nay, even counterproductive to try to force you to become what you are meant to be if you do not wish to become ... anything."

Lift crossed her arms and gave him a hard look. "You," she declared, "are being grumpy. We gotta rob the giant green fishbowl again to cheer you up."

"You know as well as I do that that would not work, and I know as well as you do that you are trying to redirect this conversation. Very well. Fine. We will not discuss the matter further until you wish to."

It wasn't that she didn't want to change. Well, she _didn't_, but even going to the starvin' _Nightwatcher_ hadn't stopped that for long. But the real gristlies of what Wyndle was prodding at was that he wanted them to go back to Roshar where there were spren and stormlight, where she could train Edgedancer squires and learn the Fourth and Fifth Oaths.

Back to Roshar, where the Everstorm raged and the True Desolation had begun.

People needed her there, not Lift the master thief, but Lift the Knight Radiant. She had fought in their wars, surrounded by warlords and Voidbringers and that talking sword that tried to eat her because they needed her to. She had gone into Shadesmar with that scary Elsecaller because they needed her to.

But here on Earth Bet, no one needed her. So she was free. Free to be ... free to be ...

She snapped her fingers. "Imma steal you a hat."

"A ... hat? You know I can't wear a—"

"Something bright and cheerful, the opposite of you in every way."

"And I suppose you'd have to wear it for me."

Lift considered that. "What an interestin' idea."

Wyndle sighed. "Fine, fine. Let's go steal a—ugh—hat."

WWW

The sun set behind Captain's Hill, letting the scum of the city hide in darkness. _Let them._ If they didn't hide, she couldn't hunt them, and if they didn't run, she couldn't chase them. She was Shadow Stalker, and the night belonged to her.

She jumped from rooftop to rooftop, a wraithlike silhouette against the skyline, searching for her prey.

In the old days, she sometimes spent all night without catching a single crook. Then she'd have to go to school the next day tired from the late night with all the pent up frustration at being denied her release, all while surrounded by the entire school faculty watching her like a hawk, waiting for her to screw up.

Things got bad, but she was better now. Smarter. There was always crime going on in the city, people needing black eyes and broken jaws; the trick was seeing it from three stories up.

Fortunately, nothing recognized a predator like another predator. It was the walk that gave him away, a brisk, focused pace trying to look natural and desperate to be silent. He was a heavyset man with his hood up, following a college-aged girl.

_What are you?_ Shadow Stalker thought, flexing her fingers. _Mugger? Rapist?_ She hoped he was the latter. Rapists didn't get much sympathy no matter what happened to them.

_Come on, come on._

The man got closer and closer until he was practically within pouncing distance. It would be quick if he knew what he was doing. A hand over her mouth and a knife to her throat, then he could drag her into a dark alley. As soon as he made his intentions as unambiguous as possible, Shadow Stalker could step in and break as many of his two hundred and six bones as she could reach.

Then, at the worst possible second, a small group turned down the corner in front of them and walked toward the predator and the prey. The would-be rapist slowed down to look less suspicious, and by the time the group passed, the young woman had reached one of the busier streets.

Shadow Stalker cursed under her breath. _So close!_ But not close enough. With no crime, Shadow Stalker had no one to punish. Really, what she needed was a good sting operation, but people willing to be bait for her were hard to come by, especially since Emma didn't come with her on patrols anymore.

She checked the time on her phone. It was already eleven thirty, and she had school in the morning. She didn't care about that, but if she stayed out too late her mom would ask the PRT why Shadow Stalker always got the late night patrols, and that could lead to some ... awkward conversations.

Her official patrol ended hours ago. Her solo patrol was a self-imposed reward for not strangling Clockblocker.

If she was going to see any action tonight, she'd have to visit the Candyman.

He wasn't a cape. At least, he probably wasn't. As far as Shadow Stalker knew, he was a drug dealer who faked being a cape to intimidate thugs. Shadow Stalker had an unspoken arrangement with the man. She never tried to bring him in, and in return she could sometimes bust his customers for possession.

He did most of his work downtown in Skidmark's territory, but Tuesday nights he made a pass through the docks. He was easy to pick out with his bright red tophat, skipping merrily down the sidewalk. Some dealers tried to be discreet, but the Candyman liked to advertise. One day he'd run into Lung or someone who would rip his head off for trespassing, and Shadow Stalker would be mildly inconvenienced. Until then ...

_Finally._

A group of druggies gathered around him, and the Candyman began to negotiate the contents of his trench coat. There were three of them, about Shadow Stalker's age from what she could tell. Maybe they went to Winslow with her. It would be an unexpected pleasure to send one of her classmates to the hospital.

_Come on, make the deal already._

But before the Candyman could settle on anything, someone jumped out of the shadows, pulled the Candyman's trenchcoat right off of him, grabbed his hat, and set off at a run.

_What?_

The Candyman pulled a gun out of his pants and fired twice before the thief disappeared around a corner, but he missed.

Shadow Stalker started running before she considered why. The chase was the only thing that mattered. The prey fled, the predator pursued.

She jumped from rooftop to rooftop in her shadow state, realizing that a crime was, technically, taking place. A mugging. And possession of narcotics. Yeah. That was enough.

The kid was fast, but she kept on running underneath the street lights, making following her a piece of cake. Shadow Stalker got ahead of her, landed in the darkness between the lights, shifted out of her shadow state, and kicked the kid in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her.

Hold on, was that kid _glowing_? She could have sworn ... no, it was nothing. The kid, a small Hispanic girl wearing an oversized Protectorate T-shirt, sat up, readjusted the Candyman's hat on her head, and looked at her, seemingly unconcerned with being caught by a cape.

"Who are you?" she asked.

Shadow Stalker hesitated. As long as the prey ran, she could chase her, and if the prey fought back, Shadow Stalker could defend herself as brutally as necessary. Otherwise ... what was she supposed to do? Just arrest her? Ugh. This was turning out to be one hell of a night.

"Shadow Stalker. And you have something that doesn't belong to you." Did she really say that? She groaned inwardly. Out of all the reasons she became a hero, the banter wasn't one of them.

The girl gave a snort. "I ain't got nothin'. Nothin' I got belongs to me."

Well, that was close enough to a confession. Shadow Stalker pointed her crossbow at her as she pulled out a pair of handcuffs. Criminals were more likely to resist arrest in the face of a clear threat, oddly enough.

"Which one are you?"

"What?"

"Which one are you?" the girl said again. "You ain't here." She pulled her shirt out in front of her, displaying the Protectorate team, as though expecting Shadow Stalker as one of the Wards to be present. Idiot.

Clearly they had gotten off on the wrong foot. To set the record straight, Shadow Stalker lowered her crossbow, stepped forward, and punched the thief in the face.

At least, that was how it played out in her head. Instead, the girl ducked, dove _between her legs_, and tripped her, stealing her crossbow in the process. When Shadow Stalker got back up, the girl was already running ... and one of Shadow Stalker's boots was missing.

_What_? _She stole my boot? Why? How?_

She set off after the girl, feeling lopsided as she ran. _Great. All I wanted was to beat someone up, and the one person I find turns out to be Bugs freakin' Bunny._

_Wait ..._

The girl was slippery. Supernaturally slippery. There was a villain that had been captured the day before (and had escaped last night) with that powerset. Aegis had briefed them on ... on Leaf earlier that day. What were her powers again? Friction negation. Okay, that had caught Shadow Stalker off guard, but that would only work once. Phytokin ... phykotin ... plant control was another one, but Leaf couldn't grow plants on a scale that mattered.

There was one more though. Leaf could create a sword that could cut through steel like it was paper. _You can cut through steel,_ Shadow Stalker thought, shifting into her shadow state and hopping onto a rooftop. _But you can't cut through me._

She pulled her backup crossbow out from behind her back—loaded with lethal ammunition instead of the tranquilizer jokes they made her use—and smiled.

WWW

Grue stood in darkness, waiting, and watching.

That was about ninety percent of being a supervillain. It paid well, sure, but for every minute spent committing a heist, another ten were spent planning, preparing, and waiting.

The days were pretty lax. He went over a few plans with Lisa about possible recruitments now that both Circus and Spitfire had fallen through, but they weren't going to pull any major heists until the tensions with the ABB settled down.

The docks were Lung's territory, and when you were in a major player's territory, either you were so quiet you weren't worth the trouble for them to evict you, or you were a major player yourself. There were other factors of course, like how much time and attention Lung had to spare for a couple of kids, but Lisa predicted that he would come after them within the week. Whether he would demand a cut of all of their earnings as rent or just slaughter the lot of them was anyone's guess, but the Undersiders would have to be ready for anything.

So now he waited in a dark alley, made darker by his presence, and watched the Midnight Matrix, an upscale nightclub that some members of the Azn Bad Boys visited. What Lisa could figure out from knowing where gang bangers got drunk, Grue could not begin to—

A small girl carrying a bundle darted down his alley, tripped over a discarded wooden pallet, and fell flat on her face. "Ow."

Grue froze and swore under his breath, despite the fact that no one would be able to hear him any more than they could see him. But supernatural darkness was perfectly hidden in a dark alleyway until someone walked into it. He'd have to get rid of the girl, whoever she was, without blowing his cover.

Then she started glowing. She lit up like a lightbulb and she _steamed_ with incandescence. "Storms it got dark fast. And quiet fast. You see anything Wyndle? 'Cause I can't see my glowin' hands in front of me starvin face. Or hear my own voice."

Oh, so she was a cape. Hero? Villain? No one he recognized, so either she was small time or new. Either way, a first impression should never be wasted.

He kept the darkness up around the alley entrance, but lowered the rest. "Little girls should be in bed this late," he said, his powers warping his voice as he spoke.

The girl jumped a bit, but she didn't seem intimidated. "Oh, hey. Who are you?"

"Grue." That didn't seem sufficient. "Of the Undersiders."

She didn't seem impressed. Instead, she placed her bundle under her arm and looked back and forth from him to the Protectorate T-shirt she wore, as though trying to find someone in a motorcycle helmet with a skull on it.

"Of the _Undersiders_," he repeated. "Not the Protectorate."

"Oh," she said slowly. "Like Salt 'n Pepper."

_Who?_ He shook his head. Judging by the bundle she was carrying, she was a thief, and not one that knew much about the city. She looked even younger than Aisha, and a better man might stop to give her a run down of the easiest ways to die in Brockton Bay, but ... aw, shoot.

"Listen, kid. I'm guessing you're new at this, so let me just give you a few pointers. First of all, wear a mask. A hat's not gonna cut it, and people only follow the unwritten rules when they're winning. Second, if your powers involve _glowing in the dark,_ then you probably shouldn't be—"

He heard a sudden _squelch_ and felt a sharp pain in his neck as something hit him from further down the alley. As he turned, a second bolt hit him in the chest.

WWW

_And just think,_ Shadow Stalker thought, reloading her crossbow, _I thought tonight was going to be boring._ But Glowstick Girl had lead her to _freakin' Grue!_

She recognized his signature darkness as soon as the kid had run into it, and then it was just a matter of doubling around and coming into the alley from the other side. Her first two bolts had struck true before he buried himself in darkness, so she aimed her third shot at where the little girl had been. Damn shame. The kid had been helpful, but, well, witnesses and all that. She fired twice more just to be sure before the darkness faded, leaving two bodies on the pavement.

She crept forward, her blood brimming with adrenaline, listening for Hellhound's dogs or anyone else in Grue's little posse. But at this point, what could they do? Grue's powers interfered with hers, but the rest of them were placeholders at best.

Shadow Stalker didn't bother checking for a pulse. That seemed unnecessary with a crossbow bolt through his heart. But when she yanked it out, he spasmed a little. She smiled at that, and was a bit disappointed that pulling out the bolts from his neck and arm didn't have the same reaction.

Really the only thing bad about this was that she could only kill him once.

_Says who?_

Her mouth stretched into a grin, and gripping all three bolts in her fist, she drove them into his chest and ripped them out again. Logically, a mutilated corpse made for a trickier autopsy, but as she went _in_ and _out_ and _in _and _out_ all she could think about as laughter spilled out of her like blood was every time he got in her way, _every time_ he—

Something smashed into the side of her head, and she went out like a light.

WWW

Grue woke up to the eyes of a little girl with an arrow sticking out of one of them.

"Ah!"

"_Ph'nglui mglw'nafh?_" she said.

What had happened? He remembered a strange dream where Shadow Stalker had shot him, but ... but his costume was covered in blood and had holes in it.

"Are you okay?"

The girl blinked, which came out as more of a wink, and a drop of blood fell off the end of her protruding arrow like a tear. "R'leh? Wgah'nagl fhtagn!"

"Right, dumb question," he said, getting up. Nothing seemed to hurt, on his side at least, but there was still a freakin' arrow sticking out of the girl's eyeball! "I, uh, I know a doctor who doesn't ask too many questions. I'll, um ..."

"Hfan'wlgm iulgn'hp," she said, taking his hand and wrapping it around the shaft of wood. "Ngathf lgan!"

"I don't—"

She fell backward, leaving the arrow in his hand with the eyeball halfway down the shaft like a macabre shishkabob. Then, glowing, she sat up.

"Ow!" she said, blinking as a new eye reformed in the old one's socket. "Miserable splinter starvin' hurt."

Grue looked down at the arrow still in his hand. The "splinter" was longer than he thought it was, and if he was using the eye as a place marker, it looked like Shadow Stalker's shot hadn't stopped until it hit the back of the kid's skull. But she could regenerate and, if his own miraculous health was any indication, she could heal others too.

He spotted Shadow Stalker lying unconscious a few feet away. "Oh, right," the girl said. "Salt 'n Pepper was chasin' me when I met you. I don't think she liked you none."

_She tried to kill me. She tried to kill you just for being near me._ There was risk involved with being a villain, but when the heroes were involved that usually mean being arrested and sent to prison, not ... not ...

His fingers traced the holes in his costume as he wondered how many times she stabbed him. _If those are the rules you want to play by, fine!_

He brought his foot down on her arm _hard_, then kicked her in the ribs. She didn't cry out when he struck her, but he stopped when he felt the little girl watching him.

And that was _all_ she was doing. Not trying to stop him or talk him down from beating down an unconscious opponent, just watching him in the way children watched a world that could not be changed, but could be remembered.

He stopped. Logically letting her live was a bad idea, but he couldn't beat someone to death with an audience. He could however pick her up and set her in a nearby dumpster, noticing that Shadow Stalker was, for some reason, missing one of her boots.

The little girl nodded in seeming approval, climbed into the dumpster after her, and wrapped Shadow Stalker up in a trench coat as though tucking her in.

"I never caught your name," he said. He glanced out into the street. He had his wall of darkness back up again, and no one out there seemed to have noticed them.

"Lift," she said, perched on the dumpster's metal corner. She didn't seem to be having any trouble balancing. "Master thief. And you said your name was Goo?"

"Grue."

She seemed to consider that. "Imma just call you Skullface."

He frowned. It wouldn't help his rep to have a little girl making up stupid nicknames for him ... but that little girl had just saved his life, so his rep could, for the time being, shove it. "You were able to knock out Shadow Stalker?" Shadow Stalker was trouble without a way to hurt her in her shadow state, and healing didn't seem like it would cut it.

"Right, that was her name." Lift shrugged. "I just whacked her in the head with Wyndle when she was savaging your corpse. She was laughing _a lot_."

_Wyndle? _he thought. Then, _Corpse?_ His hand went once more to the far too many holes in his costume, and he shook his head. He did not want to go down that mental road.

Still, the girl could heal serious injuries and survive being shot through the head, and Grue doubted that even Lung could do that. And the Undersiders had been trying (unsuccessfully) to recruit every independent villain more competent than Uber and Leet. _And_ any day now Lung was going to deal with them unless they could avoid being dealt with.

"How would you like to meet my friends?" He knew what the rest of the team would say when he brought her. Alec wouldn't care one way or another. Lisa would weigh the loss to intimidation that having a twelve-year-old girl on the team would bring with it against the advantage of having someone that the heroes couldn't hurt without looking like horrible people, and hopefully the prospect of having a healer on the team would tip the balance. Rachel would see Lift as both an outsider and weak and wouldn't want her on the team, but she'd be outvoted.

Still, his teammates would need to come to that conclusion on their own, and Lift had a choice to make too.

Lift narrowed her eyes. "Your friends got any food?"

That surprised him, and he started to think that the self-proclaimed "master thief" didn't grasp what he was offering. Still, he doubted if there was a single cape in the world, let alone the city, that wasn't at least a little bit neurotic.

"Sure," he said, making a mental note to ask Lisa to order pizza. "We got plenty."


	3. Chapter 3

Leaf

Chapter Three

Lift always liked sharing food. Every bite she took was shared, even if the people sharing it didn't know it. When they didn't know it, it was exciting, and when they did know it, it was ... nice.

"So," Lisa said. "What can you tell us about yourself?"

Lisa was one of Skullface's friends. Only Skullface had taken off his helmet and leather coat and wanted to be called Brian now. She had freckles, and Lift wondered if they would glow in the dark if Lisa held her breath, but she was afraid to ask.

"Mmh mmfhmm," Lift said, chewing. The pizza was good, still hot and everything. It was one of the basic pizzas with slices of spiced meat on the cheese. Lift preferred the kind with bits of fruit on it, but she wouldn't know what her favorite was until she had one of each, and there were _millions_ of kinds of pizza out there.

She swallowed. "I'm Lift. I wandered into town a few weeks ago, and I've been pretty much everywhere else. Um, and that's about it." She took another bite. She was also a member of an ancient order of mystic knights from another world, but that didn't seem important.

"Uh huh," Lisa said, sounding amused. "What did you get arrested for?"

Lift hesitated. "What makes you think I got arrested?"

"You're still wearing half of the prison uniform."

Oh right. That. Lift narrowed her eyes. "You know, how about instead of me telling you about me, why don't you tell me about me?"

"Oh boy," the other boy in the group, Alec, said.

"Lisa," Brian said, "be nice."

She flashed him a smile. "I'm always nice."

Alec made a cough that sounded suspiciously like, "_Liar._"

She turned to Lift, and her smile seemed like she was about to start munching on souls. "Let's start at the beginning, shall we? You're parents died at a young age, and after that you spent your time in orphanages and foster care when you weren't living on the streets. You were a chronic runaway, never staying in one place long enough to make many friends, and certainly never _depending_ on anyone.

"And then you triggered. Suddenly you had powers, and all your problems went away. But problems were all you ever had, so you started looking for more problems before you were left with nothing. You used to steal just to get by, but now you steal for the challenge, the thrill, and the fact that if you ever stop running away, you'll have time to think, and you've been trying to avoid _that_ since your mom died."

"Lisa!" Brian said. "You're done."

"I'm just getting started."

"No," he said. "You're done."

Lift looked down at her pizza, and realized that she didn't feel hungry anymore. She took another bite anyway and chewed spitefully. _Storm 'em all._

Lisa hesitated and glanced at Lift. "Sorry. I got carried away. Talking is basically my superpower, and I like to show off whenever I get the chance. But can I tell you a secret? Everyone here is running away from something, so it's nothing to be ashamed of."

"We are?" Alec said. "Since when? I just thought that crime was something you do when you're too lazy to get a real job."

"_Everyone,_" Lisa said again. "Some of us are just more deeply in denial than others."

Alec laughed. "Go screw yourself."

"So that's just one of the reasons why we think you would fit right in on the team," Lisa continued.

Lift looked up. "Eh?"

"Sorry, she's getting ahead of herself," Brian said. "But crime is a cutthroat business in Brockton Bay. Shadow Stalker didn't hesitate to kill us both, and she's one of the _heroes_. Some of the villains are even worse. Anyone in Kaiser's gang would attack you on sight for not being white. Lung's gang would attack you for not being Asian. Plenty of others would attack you just to cut down on the competition or to prove that they can beat another cape. Not a lot of people would have done what you did when you healed me, and even if you walk away right now, I want you to know that we'll remember that.

"But if you don't want to walk away, there's room on the team for you. We have a flawless record on jobs pulled, and we're the best in the city at getting out of trouble. And ... and this isn't a good place to work alone, especially if you're new."

Lift considered that. "What kind of jobs do you do?"

"So far just robberies."

She nodded. There were loads of kinds of crime to do. Blackmail, money laundering, extortion, smuggling, killing folk. Thievin' was crime, but it was _clean_.

"You leave bodies around?"

Brian glanced at the fourth member of the group, a girl named Rachel who was standing apart from them, before answering. "No. Like I said, we're good at getting out of trouble, and it's not worth the heat."

Lift nodded again. It didn't take any skill to rob a place full of dead people. He might have been lying, but he hadn't killed Shadow Stalker when he had the chance. He even put her in that nice, warm dumpster instead of leaving her out in the cold, dark alley. She could see herself working with thieves like these for a job or two.

But could she see herself joining their group? Could she join a group at all?

She had helped loads of folks, sure. Mostly other theives who had needed a bit of her personal Awesomeness to get them in or out of trouble. More recently, she had started helping emperors, warlords, and other Radiants to keep the world from ending.

But she had never been a part of a group. She'd never had people who could tell her what to do, and had never been able to tell others what to do. She was free, but ... but sometimes being free got real lonesome.

She got up, walked over to the edge of the roof, and sat down.

They kept their lights on all night long in the city, to make up for how you couldn't see no stars. To the east, Lift could see the world's one, lonely moon reflected in the sea.

She was nobody, a street urchin from Rall Elorim, the afterthought of the Highstorm before it reached the Endless Ocean. But she had traveled the world—traveled _between_ worlds, stolen from kings, warlords, even a mad demigod. But whether she snuck into their homes and palaces alone or in a group, she always went back out by herself.

"Hey, Wyndle?" she said, softly enough so the others wouldn't hear.

"Yes Mistress?"

"What's 'chronic' mean?"

"Lasting a long time. A chronic illness, for example, isn't terminal—it doesn't kill you—but it makes life worse until you manage to get rid of it."

"Is it just illnesses?" she asked. "Ain't there chronic good things, like chronic cinnamon rolls and chronic sugar highs?"

"Um, the term is seldom used in a positive manner."

She nodded, expecting as much. She sat for a while longer, swinging her feet into the wall beneath her before she got up. "Alright," she said, returning to the group—_her_ group, now. "I'm in."

WWW

_Ow._

That was the first thing Shadow Stalker thought when she woke up. The second thing wasn't much better.

_Dear God, what is that smell?_

She felt like someone had hit her with a truck and thrown her in a dumpster. Getting up, gingerly to appease her bruises, she found out that she was only half right.

_What the hell?_

The night's events slowly drifted back to her. _I killed Grue. Totally worth it. Then ... then I let myself get distracted. Not the best idea I had. Then ... then ..._

Looking around, she decided that she was _probably_ in the same ally. Grue's body wasn't there, but she spotted a few crossbow bolts in the still dark night.

_Someone moved the body. Bodies. And knocked me out. Who?_

The Undersiders? Maybe, but if they caught her with Grue's corpse, Shadow Stalker suspected that she'd be dog food by now instead of leaving her with a bruise the size of her torso and breaking her wrist. The ABB? This was their territory, and maybe not killing her was the gang's twisted way of saying thank you for taking out a rival villain. Possible, but less likely than them also taking meticulous photographic evidence of her unauthorized kill to blackmail her with.

_Ugh. Still, worth it._ She had to tell herself that.

She began picking up her scattered bolts, not wanting to leave _too_ much proof that she had been there, because the one thing that she was sure of was that whoever knocked her out last night, it hadn't been the PRT. They only threw her in the garbage figuratively.

She couldn't find the crossbow that the mini-villain Leaf had stolen from her, or her backup crossbow. That sucked. She'd need to come up with an excuse, like she had accidently stepped on it or something. Would they buy it? No, not likely. Probably best to just fess up. To the solo patrol, not the murder. They expected her to break the rules a little. It was like going five miles over the speed limit or jaywalking. Piggot would punish her by making her read to first graders on account of the Director being a demon from hell, but Shadow Stalker would have the enduring warmth of the knowledge that Grue was dead to get her through it.

One of the bolts she picked up had something stuck on it. When she held it up to the dim light shining from the street, it looked like ... an eyeball?

_Gross!_

Seriously, couldn't bad guys just fade away after they died like they did in video games? No, of course not, they had to leave disgusting body parts all over the place, as though they were trying to get back at her for killing them. Most of the eye ... juice had leaked out, and what was left was the worst combination of squishy and crunchy. _Nasty._

Still ... the bolt had gone right through the pupil, and she hadn't even been _aiming _for it. Total bull's eye.

She slid the eye off the shaft and tossed it in the trash, smiling to herself. Everything hurt and there were things smeared over her costume that she'd rather not think about, but Grue was dead, and that was all that mattered.

WWW

Lift spent most of then next day learning how to be a super villain. She had always been a thief, but super villains weren't just thieves that were extra awesome. They had _dress codes_.

"So I'm not allowed to steal nothin' unless I'm wearing this," she said, looking at a mirror.

"Until we get you a costume that's more than just a cut up shirt with eye holes," Lisa said. "On the bright side, it makes you look like Inigo Montoya."

"Who?"

"You know," Lisa said, striking a pose. "'You killed my father! Prepare to die?'"

"What?"

"Have you never seen _Princess Bride_? What are you, from another planet?"

"Oh! Right, that. Yeah, I know what you're talking about." Going to another world was the same as going to another country. You just had to pretend to know everything they expected you to, and you were fine. "Don't masks stand out? I mean, if folks spot me runnin' around in a princess Montoya mask, they'll know I ain't up to no good, right?"

A smile spread across Lisa's face. "Oh. Okay, have a seat. So. Common criminals wear masks to hide their faces, but we aren't _just _criminals. Honestly, committing actual crimes is near the bottom of what we do. We are, first and foremost, entertainers. _Performers_. As long as we put on a good show, the city will put up with a lot of what we do. If you look at the classical Greek plays—I'm guessing you haven't, but bear with me—they would wear incredibly ornate masks with exaggerated expressions so that the audience could see their faces from the back row. Not the _actor's_ faces. No one cares about the actors. No one cares about Lisa or Lift or Brian or Alec or Rachel. They only care about the _characters._ So when we go out in costume, you need to be a character so big, no one can notice little Lift hiding beneath it."

Lift blinked. "Huh?"

Wyndle grew across the floor looking up at them, frowning thoughtfully. "She speaks like a Lightweaver. Be careful, Lift. Lightweavers should be trusted only sometimes, and rarely believed."

"It will make more sense after you get used to it," Lisa said. "Until then, think about costume designs and cape names. It's one of the few chances you ever get to _choose_ who you are instead of being who everyone else says you are."

Lift glanced at Wyndle. _Lightweaver philosophy?_ She didn't have a head for neither philosophy nor Lightweavers, but she'd heard that they had a special kind of crazy that got them out of nearly as much trouble as it got 'em into.

She took off her mask and twirled it around her finger. "You got a costume?"

"Of course. It's not much, just purple spandex with eye designs. I picked the name Tattletale because it gives just enough of a hint about my powers to be misleading, which is a devil of a balance to pull off. Regent's costume is way better than mine, to be honest." Alec gave them a lazy wave without looking away from the game fabrial he was playing with. "It looks completely ridiculous. I'm serious. No one can see him in that thing and take him seriously, and that's really all you can ask for."

Alec nodded. "I almost put work into that," he admitted.

"Of course," Lisa continued, "the bare minimum is that it's recognizable as a costume. Body armor and a utility belt come second to brand-name recognition. You never want someone to mistake you for, like, a henchman or something, because that's just embarrassing."

Lift hesitated. "It is?"

"Absolutely. Capes are worth talking to if only to taunt them, but some villains we meet kill henchmen to make those taunts. Fortunately, any sufficiently ridiculous outfit can be taken for a costume, so you don't need to worry too much. A good name is harder to come up with. You need to make it yours, which takes at least one good public event, and you need it to be memorable. It may not seem like a big thing, but if you're not careful, you could end up like the Anonymous Anemone."

"Who?"

"The Anonymous Anemone. He was a villain down in Florida with a minor Stranger power. He ended up teaming up with a low tier Master named Inmity's Enemy, and these were really bad villains. Not bad like Lung and Kaiser, they were Uber and Leet kind of bad. It got to the point where they nearly got sent to the Birdcage because no one wanted to spend the ten minutes necessary to say Anonymous Anemone and Inmity's Enemy without tripping over their own tongues."

Lift felt like she ought to contribute to this conversation. "Huh."

"So," she continued, setting one of the world's more common fabrial's and setting it on her lap. "I hacked the PRT database, and apparently they've been calling you Leaf. Now, I'm just guessing here, but I'm gonna say that someone asked you your name, you said 'Lift,' and they just heard it wrong."

Lift considered that. "Sure. Could be." Not that a whole lot of people used either name, to be honest. Mostly, folks called her things like scamp and cretin, as in, "Come back her with my bagel, you little scamp!" and "You cretin! When I get my hands on you, I'll blah, blah, blah, angry threatening noises!"

"Okay. Well, if you want to change your name, the best time to come up with a new one is right now. You can heal, so you could take a name like Elixir or Grail, but those sound, you know, _heroic_. Do you have any other powers?"

"Yup. I'm slick." To demonstrate, she reached out with her foot and touched the couch Alec was sitting on, infusing it with Awesomeness until it began to glow. Then she kicked it, and it started sliding across the floor. It was slow, but without friction or air resistance getting in the way, it kept on moving unit it hit the wall.

"For the record," Alec said, craning his head to keep watching the entertainment fabrial he was looking at, "I did not volunteer for this." He tried to kick off the floor to put the couch back where it was, but by then its Awesomeness had run out and it wasn't slick anymore. "Just great. If I get a crick in my neck from holding this position for the next four hours, I will demand healing."

"Friction negation," Lisa said. "That's probably the one we'll show our enemies the most, and you might not want to advertise the whole healing thing unless you want people to take you down first. So Slick, Greaser, Slider, Oil, Wax ... Socks. Stop me if you hear one you like."

"I will."

"Smooth Criminal if you want to make a Michael Jackson reference. Slipper, Tripper, Skates ... I don't know. Any other powers I should know about?"

Lift considered that. _Abrasion, Regrowth ..._ "Oh! I can make bubbles with my spit." She licked her lips and demonstrated her _oldest_ super power.

"Uh, yeah, everyone can do that."

Lift narrowed her eyes. "Can you do it?"

"Like I said, everyone."

"Prove it."

Caught in the obvious lie, Lisa changed the subject. "So another thing I noticed while on the PRT database was that when you were arrested, you managed to conjure up a sword that could cut through anything. You, uh, wanna talk about that?"

"Oh. That. That's not really my power, that's Wyndle's power."

"Technically," Wyndle said, "all of your powers come through me, though I do appreciate being credited for functioning as a Shardblade."

"Wyndle?" Lisa asked.

Lift nodded. "He's my ... well, I used to think he was a Voidbringer, but it turns out he was just pretending the whole time and was really just a cultivationspren, which is loads less interesting."

"I never pretended to be a voidspren!" Wyndle said. "I repeatedly denied the accusation, and you constantly ignored me."

Lift ignored him. "He can turn into stuff, as long as it's only one piece and made of metal. Hey Wyndle! Show her the fancy chair you like."

He sighed, but Lift could tell he was in a good mood. He was always a lot more cheerful when people were talking about chairs, which was why he was so miserable all the time. Lift extended her hand, and Wyndle filled it, taking the form of an ornate metal throne twice as tall as she was. It should have been real heavy, but Wyndle didn't eat much so neither did the Shardchair. Everyone in Roshar was starvin' loony about Shardblades, but Lift spent more time sitting down than chopping people's heads off.

"Wow!" Lisa said, getting up and peering closer. "The craftsmanship is exquisite."

_See?_ Wyndle said, straight into her head. _She appreciates me._

Lift didn't respond. All she knew about art she learned from ol' Whitehair, and Wyndle's Shardchair didn't have no naked bits. It had lots of plants, though, a whole garden of Roshar ones, and even a few earth ones Wyndle liked. At the top were all ten Heralds under what looked like the Highstorm and the Everstorm crashing into each other.

"Real uncomfortable, though," Lift said. "He can't do nothin' but metal, so you gotta have a real fat butt or your own pillow to sit on him." She grabbed a cushion from the couch, put it on the Shardchair, and plopped down.

"I like the style," Lisa said, still studying it. "The bottom part looks oriental, but this relief up here looks early Renaissance. Who are these people? They look like saints."

_For what it's worth_, Wyndle said, _I was imitating the seventh century Talicanti movement, but I would enjoy the chance to compare styles._

Lift shrugged. "Bunch o' crazy people." She had only met Darkness or, as he called himself, Nale, Herald of Justice, and he had been crazy enough for ten.

"Well, anyway, you can make metal objects at will, manipulate friction, and heal. I'm ... not seeing a common theme here, but if you come up with a name you like, let us know and we'll introduce you during the next heist. Until then, I think we'll just keep calling you Leaf when we're in costume."

That seemed good to her. "Kay. Welp, Imma go get some lunch."

"Steal some lunch, you mean," Lisa said, raising an eyebrow. "Despite the full fridge, pantry, and wallet, you're going to go steal something instead."

Lift considered that. "Yup."

Lisa shrugged. "Fine, fine. No matter who you rob, there's no way you're going to cause as much trouble as Rachel can get into just by walking her dogs."

WWW

Lift came back a few hours later will a hat full of lunch. That was the nice thing about hats. You never knew when you might need an emergency bowl, and until then you could keep them on your head so they didn't get in the way.

Lisa was gone, but Alec was right where she had left him, playing with his fabrial. Like most games Lift didn't know how to play, it looked starvin' boring, but Alec looked up when she came in.

"Chinese food?" he asked, sniffing the air.

Lift looked down into her hat. It was earth food, and China was a part of earth, so ... "Might be."

"Did you get any fortune cookies?"

Lift checked her hat again. "Don't think so."

"Crud. Rob a better restaurant next time. It's not Chinese food without a fortune cookie. Heck, Thai and Korean places usually have them these days. Also, would you mind moving the couch back to where it was? I would, but then I'd have to get up."

WWW

Lung looked down at his empty plate. He scanned the room for signs of forced entry, but found nothing. While there were many in Brockton bay who could break into his home and steal from him, he had assumed that no one was foolish enough to try.

Clearly, he had underestimated them.

Examples would have to be made. He did not normally have time for such things, but his recent recruitment efforts have borne fruit and Bakuda was settled within the ranks of his organization.

"Oni Lee," he said after calling his lieutenant. "Prepare your men. We will make an example this night."

There was a brief pause. "An example," Oni Lee repeated. "The gruesome and public kind?"

"The final kind."

Another sound that might have been a cough, a laugh, or just static. "I will look forward to it. Who are we ... exemplaring?"

Finding out who had stolen his midday meal was unimportant; when lightning struck, all walked lower. He could have Oni Lee go on a murder spree through a daycare and it would send the correct message, but there was a minor gang in his territory that he had been meaning to deal with. The Underdogs or something. No, that wasn't right.

It didn't matter. He'd look up what the rabble of arrogant children called himself later. But first, he'd get himself something to eat.

WWW

A/n So, I was totally not expecting this, but Raven610 has set up a tv tropes page for this story. Check it out and be impressed.


	4. Chapter 4

Leaf

Chapter Four

Brian found his mother on a hospital bed. A respirator covered her face and a network of tubes disappeared under the blanket. She had arrived in an ambulance the night before after overdosing on drugs. Brian should have come earlier, but, well, he'd been busy.

Besides, what was he supposed to say at a time like this with his mother in a drug coma? She had been a worthless, drug-addled wreck for nearly half his life and had finally gotten what she deserved. But that wasn't the sort of thing you said aloud.

Aisha was there too, which surprised him. She looked up from her phone when he came in.

"Hey. I'm surprised you came."

"I'm surprised _you_ came."

Aisha shrugged and looked back down at her phone. Some kind of mobile game or something. "I was nearby, so I figured I'd drop in to see how she was doing."

Brian doubted it, but if Aisha wanted to feign indifference, he wasn't going to call her out on it. He _wished_ he could be indifferent about something like this, but instead he felt calculating, thinking about how this evidence of her relapse would affect the custody battle he was going to get into, and he felt angry at himself for _being _calculating at a time like this, and he felt angry at his mother for putting him in this position.

"How bad is it?"

Aisha shrugged again. "Don't know. No one knows what she was taking except for this week's boyfriend, and he hasn't shown up."

_Which you wouldn't know unless you were here the whole time._

"Well, she'll wake up eventually." He couldn't consider the alternative. He couldn't imagine that someone who had always been gone in every way that mattered would ever _leave_.

"Yeah," Aisha said. "Sure. Maybe Panacea will wander by or something."

She wouldn't. The addiction was all in the brain, which Panacea couldn't touch. Healing an addict of everything else just gave him another chance to get high, and the New Wave decided that it was a waste of time and resources, like giving a chronic alcoholic a liver transplant.

It was justice. Cold, indifferent justice. Bad people did bad things to themselves, and the city was a better place when they were gone.

Only ... he had been there, just last night. He had _died_. His life didn't flash before his eyes, and he didn't see any light at the end of the tunnel. Just cold ... indifference. And for a few seconds, the city had been a better place with him not in it.

"How much longer are you planning on staying?"

"I'm gonna head out pretty soon," Aisha said. "Some friends are seeing a movie later."

He nodded. "Well, take care of yourself."

"Always do," she said. "Wait, are you leaving already? You just got here!"

"I'll come by later. There's ... there's something I need to deal with right now."

He didn't care about justice. He didn't care about the city. He wasn't a good person, he was a _villain_. All he cared about was himself and his own.

But right now, the woman lying on the hospital bed _was _his own, and there wasn't a damn thing either of them could do about it.

He just ... he just wished that some day, she would realize that too.

WWW

"Put that down," Rachel snarled, "or I swear to God I'll have my dogs rip out your throat!"

Lift hung on the wall nearly up to the ceiling, clinging to Wyndle with one hand and holding onto a bag of dog treats with the other. "I can regrow a throat."

"And my dogs can rip it out again!"

Beneath her, Rachel's dogs barked. They were a lot like axehounds only with fur instead of shells, and Lift had never liked axehounds. Axehounds were for people who wanted to sic wild animals on innocent thieves and then say stuff like, "I never thought little Ruktuk would go so far, constable! Usually he's so gentle."

Rachel wouldn't say something like that, though. She seemed the sort to feed people to her dogs and then mount their heads over the door as a warning to the rest. And Lift had stolen her food. Or at least her dogs' food, which was just as good. And bacon flavored, if what she heard was true.

"Hey, can we just calm down a bit?" Lisa said. "A five dollar bag of dog treats is not worth killing each other over."

"Like hell it isn't!" Rachel said. "_I_ never wanted this little twerp here in the first place, and she's already taking my stuff! Those treats are for good dogs _only_, Lisa, and she has not been a good dog!"

Lisa turned to Alec. "Back me up here, would you?"

"Sorry, no can do," he replied from the couch. "I can't pause an online game. Seriously, you'd think someone supposedly as smart as you could figure that out."

"I just think that if Brian comes back and finds us all killing each other, he'll—wait, what do you mean _supposedly_?"

Meanwhile, Rachel took one of her shoes off and threw it at her.

"Ow!"

Rachel took off her other shoe and threw it too.

"If you keep this up I'm gonna get hungry!" Lift said. "And then you can say goodbye to your bacon treats."

"No! You—don't you—Lisa, where do you keep your gun?"

"Okay," Lisa said. "There is no way on earth—"

"Over on the counter in plain sight," Alec said. "I don't think anyone on the team has ever passed a gun safety course. But we all know first aid, so we're fine."

Lisa turned to Alec, a look of incredulity on her face. "Why would you tell her—"

"Found it!"

Alec shrugged. "You always get on my case for leaving my stuff out. It's only fair."

Fortunately Brian came back before things could escalate. Not that Lift had been worried, it was just that this was easier than whatever her backup plan was going to be.

He looked around the room, taking in the scene. "What the hell is going on?"

Alec didn't bother looking up from his game. "Rachel is being Rachel, Lift is being Lift, Lisa's being Lisa, and I'm being me. Honestly I don't know what else you were expecting."

Brian shook his head. "Rachel, put the gun down and call off your dogs. And Lift ... what are you even hanging onto up there?"

"Wyndle."

"What?"

"My imaginary friend."

Above her, Wyndle sighed. "While technically correct," he said, "that is still _very _false."

What, did he not think they were friends? Lift ought to do something nice for him some day, like water him or something.

"I'm not putting the gun down until _she_ gives me back the dog treats!"

"Did you steal Rachel's dog treats?" Brian demanded.

"I _found_ them," Lift said.

"Well, give them back. What were you even planning on doing with them? Eat them?"

"Maybe."

Brian stared at her. "_Why_?"

"They're _bacon_ flavored!"

Brian gave a very Wyndle-like sigh and shook his head. "I swear, I leave for five seconds and ... Okay, look. Lift, lick one of the treats."

"What?" Rachel demanded. "No!"

"Don't _eat_ any, just lick one."

Lift grinned and forced the bag open—no easy feat with only one hand—and gave one of the treats a long, exaggerated lick.

At that moment, a small part of her died.

During moments of desperation, curiosity, and both, Lift had tried to eat roof tiles, small rocks, and a rubber tire, but she had never tasted _anything _like that.

"Blegh!" she said, dropping off the wall where Brian caught her. "What _was_ that? That wasn't bacon flavored! That was poop flavored!" She climbed up on his shoulders and tossed the bag to Rachel. "Keep 'em. I don't want 'em anymore."

Rachel caught the bag and lowered the gun. "You're not good enough for them anyway."

"Would you really have shot her over a five dollar bag of snacks?" Brian demanded.

Rachel glared at him. "She'd live. And they were mine, not hers."

"You don't shoot teammates. Period. Got it? And you don't steal from teammates either, Lift. Going out of your way to provoke Rachel is the dumbest thing you could do here."

Rachel nodded in agreement.

"And, _god_, Rachel, what the hell? I ... I don't even know what to say to you." He shook his head. "We'll talk later. Lift? You're coming with me."

"Neat! Where are we going?"

Brian went out the door, forcing Lift to either duck or jump down off his shoulders to avoid hitting the wall. She chose to duck.

He took a deep breath as they went down the stairs. "I ... I need to ask you for a favor."

WWW

Aisha was still there when he returned. "I thought you were leaving soon," he said.

A shrug. "My worthless friends ducked out at the last second. It looked like a pretty dumb movie anyway." She glanced at Lift. "Who's she?"

"She's ..." He had come prepared to tell anyone who asked that Lift was a friend of the family, but he couldn't use that with Aisha. Oh well. She already knew about his powers, which meant that she knew about Grue, and meeting another member of the team wasn't going to kill them all. Probably. "She's a friend from work."

Aisha's eyes widened, then narrowed when she looked at Lift. She didn't seem impressed, and even Grue had to admit that the kid didn't look like much. Lift was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, which _mostly _fit, but she didn't have any shoes and didn't seem to want any.

"You don't look like Bitch or Tattletale, and I'm pretty sure you're not Regent. You new?"

"You don't need to know that," Brian said. He'd happily (or at least grudgingly) invite Aisha onto the team if she ever triggered, but until then he wanted to keep his work and home separate. At least that was the theory, but here he was taking his work to see his mother. "As long as you're here, you can be the lookout. Stand outside and warn us if anyone comes."

That wasn't likely. The general hospital was overcrowded and understaffed at the best of times, and the ER was even worse. A nurse probably came by once an hour to make sure that Cecilia's condition hadn't changed, and would keep on doing so until a doctor had time to see her or the heat death of the universe occurred, whichever came first.

"What? No! If you're gonna do something weird to Mom, I'm staying here to watch! _You _go be the lookout."

"_Aisha_," he growled. And it did come out as a growl. He must have been spending too much time with Rachel.

"It's okay," Lift said, speaking up for the first time since they came in the hospital. "Wyndle can be the lookout."

Grue turned to her. "I still don't know what that is."

She held out her hand, and a rod of silvery metal filled it. It was sculpted to resemble a warped piece of wood with spiraling grooves, the sort that a Tolkienesque wizard might carry as a staff, and it had drops of water condensing on its surface. "Brian, Wyndle. Wyndle, Brian." She knocked him on the head with the rod to emphasize the introduction, and then the rod disappeared into ... whatever it had been before. Water vapor?

Oddly enough, though, while Lift's eyes had been dark brown, they changed to a pearlescent white. Had that happened before? He hadn't been paying attention the first time they met. He had been ... distracted.

"He's invisible when he ain't metal," Lift explained. "He'll let me know if anyone's coming."

Well, as long as she was alright with it. Part of the reason he wanted Aisha out of the room was because he was already exploiting Lift enough to heal his mother without showing her off for his sister's entertainment, but the kid didn't seem big on secrecy.

Lift approached the sleeping woman and looked her over. She pulled off the respirator mask, causing the machine to start beeping, and she ... blew on her. Her breath came out as a white steam, and even though his mother couldn't breath on her own, the mist pushed itself into her nostrils.

Cecilia awoke with a start, gasping for breath. _That was quick_. Othala of the Empire Eighty-Eight could accelerate normal healing, but that didn't come close to what Lift could do. Even Panacea often took minutes to heal someone instead of seconds. What Lift could do ... it wasn't something that could be used to patch someone up after the fight, it could heal someone in the middle of a fight and send them back in.

He'd have time to ponder the implications of Lift's abilities later, though. Right now, his mother was awake.

"Aisha?" she said, blinking in the cold, bright light. "Brian?"

"Mom!" Aisha said. "You're al—awake!"

"Hey Mom," Brian said. "How's rehab? Those NA meetings working out for you?"

She looked around, still disoriented. He'd been there. It was cruel to talk to her like this now when she was still confused, but ... but it was cruel to have this conversation at all. In a better world, they would have taken the moment to rejoice in her miraculous healing and her second chance at life, but he knew better than to hope that something as simple as a brush with death would wake her up.

"I-I may have had a bit too much to drink last night, but I feel a lot better. What's that beeping sound?"

Brian moved over to the machine and switched it off. If someone came by to see what had happened, he'd ... he'd think of something. They had been waiting for Cecilia to get better on her own anyway.

"You weren't just drinking, Mom. What was it? Heroine? Crack? Did you even bother to check, or did you put it in you just to see what would happen?"

She stuck her lower lip out in a pout. "Oh, sweety, you're so mean to me. Don't be mean; I'm in a hospital! Can't you see I'm in a hospital?" Her voice came out in a whine. His mom never nagged them, even though according to every family sitcom he had ever seen, nagging was supposed to be a mother's main role. Instead, he'd ended up with a mother who whined.

"Yes, I know you're in a hospital. They called me, because for some reason I'm still on your emergency contact list."

"Well! If all you're going to do is yell at me, I don't want you here."

"I didn't come here to yell at you!" he shouted. He lowered his voice and continued. "I didn't. I came here to say goodbye."

It wasn't until much later that he realized that Lift had already left.

WWW

Lift could spend her whole life in hospitals with her powers. She'd thought about it while living in the palace. It was hard to steal things when the starvin' Prime Aqasix was willing to give her anything she wanted, and there were always hurt and sick people needing to be healed.

But that was the problem; _always_ was the problem. She could spend all day every day stuffing her stomach and blowing on people, and there'd still be more to do. Every problem had a root, and unless you got the root, you always had more problem.

Not that Lift had any idea what the root was. Politics, probably.

She left Brian behind with his mother, trying not to think about her own mother. There weren't too many perfect people in the world, but she had been one of them. She always had time for people when they needed someone to talk to or just to care about them. People didn't care as much as they ought. Lift certainly hadn't, not until long after her mother had died.

Instead, Lift focused on one of the snack fabrials in the building. It was a big ol' box with a display of snacks behind a glass screen, called a vending machine. It would be easy to turn Wyndle into a Shardknife and cut her way to victory, and if she wanted to she could make the fabrial so Slick the screws holding it together would slide out and the whole thing would fall apart.

But that would be too easy. Instead, she turned Wyndle into money, a Shardcoin, and slipped him into a slot. The fabrial made a clicking sound, and then she had Wyndle appear in her hand again to send him back through the slot.

_This is horribly dishonest, Mistress,_ Wyndle said.

"No it ain't. I'm paying money, see?"

_I am not a legitimate form of currency. Using me as such is degrading in ways you cannot possibly imagine._

"Sure you're currency. You're a Shardblade, ain't ya? You're worth a couple kingdoms back home, and they got dozens of you guys already. Imagine what you're worth here when you're one of a kind!"

Wyndle sighed. _There are numerous social and economic factors that do not apply to me or to this specific situation. I know that you have a short attention span, so I'll be brief. First of all—_

Lift yawned.

_**First **__of all, the value of a Shardblade is determined by market demand, which while high on Roshar is severely diminished here due to both the abundance of long ranged weaponry and—_

She yawned again, louder.

"The vending machine giving you trouble?" It was Brian's little sister. Aisha. "Try kicking it."

_Also, you are not in fact exchanging me for anything, so my value, such as it is, is irrelevant._

"No, the fab—the machine's fine. Just figuring out what I want." The secret was in pressing the right buttons, and Lift could never remember the order. There was some sort of code that was _written_ on the fabrial, but she'd never learned to read. "Want anything? I'm buying."

_Conning is the technical term, and you're conning a mindless machine at that._

Aisha stepped up to the snack fabrial and studied it. Hopefully, _she_ could read and Lift could just mimic her actions to get a snack of her own. "So what's your story?" she said. "Let me guess. You joined a villain team to kick ass and take names, only to find yourself dragged off into the Laborn family drama. Am I right?"

"Nah, I'm just in it for the snacks."

Aisha pressed a few buttons and the fabrial spat out a drink. _So it's that button, that one, then beep, boop, bop._ _But what if I don't want a drink? How do I get that candy bar? _Stormfather, it was almost enough to make a starvin' thief learn to read.

"Is your mom gonna be okay?" Lift asked, facing the snack fabrial. She loaded Shardcoins into the slot until it was ready. "Brian didn't seem too happy to see her."

Aisha shrugged. "Yeah, that's Brian for you. He's always there when you need him, but when you don't he tends to forget about you and gets annoyed when you exist."

_Hm,_ Wyndle said in her mind. _If you wait for the plant to wilt, it's often too late._

Lift had no idea what he meant by that, so she ignored him. "Well, you could just live your life in a perpetual state of peril. That would solve everything." She pushed a series of buttons and a drink came out in a metal can.

"I know, right? Finally, someone gets it." She took a swig of her own drink and gave her a look. "Hey, do you wanna maybe catch a movie later? The tickets are crazy overpriced, but the theatres are a piece of cake to break into."

"I'm listening." She had never caught a movie before, but she suspected it was a kind of chicken. Lift took her drink and ignored the complex lid mechanism, choosing instead to poke a hole through the metal can with Wyndle.

_Ting!_

Lift stared at the can and stabbed it again, harder. It let out a hissing sound as Shardblade, the sort of weapon that entire kingdoms fought over for its ability to cut through stone, steel, and souls without resistance, made the barest pinprick through the metal.

"H-hey, Aisha? What is this?"

Aisha glanced at her. "That? That's a tin can."

"It's made of tin?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, aluminum. Everyone knows that."

"Right. Everyone."

Just then, Brian came back, his phone in his hand. "Time to go."

"Already?" Aisha said. "But you just got here. Lift and I were just starting to hit it off."

"No. I don't want you being a bad influence on her, and we have work issues to take care of."

Aisha's jaw dropped theatrically. "You think that _I'm _a bad influence on _her_? Frankly I'm insulted."

"She has a point," Lift said. "I am a menace to society."

"Wait, what do you mean work issues?" Aisha asked.

"That's nothing you need to worry about."

"Is it something I need to worry about?" Lift asked.

He nodded. "Absolutely. He handed her a helmet and she put it on. She didn't need it, but if she fell off his motorcycle and knocked her head off, people might stare.

WWW

"Lung," Lisa said. Only she wasn't Lisa. When they were in costume, they weren't Lisa, Brian, Alec, and Rachel, they were ... Lift couldn't remember exactly what their costume names were, so she made some up. Knowitall, Skullface, Fancypants, and Fluffy.

"Tonight?" Skullface said.

Knowitall nodded. "The ABB have started harassing people in the area for information about us. I don't think anyone knows who we are or where we live, but enough have seen people matching our descriptions, people walking dogs, or even Bitch out of costume, and eventually Lung's people are going to put the pieces together."

"Man, we're going to have to move, aren't we?" Fancypants groaned. "All my stuff is here."

"What about the Boss?" Skullface asked. "Can he help?"

Knowitall shook her head. "I just got off the phone with him. He told us to keep him posted on any updates, and that he has absolute confidence in our abilities."

Fancypants laughed. "In other words, screw you, you're on your own."

"So we have to find a way to deal with Lung, Oni Lee, and ... what was the bomb Tinker's name again?"

"Bakuda, but you don't have to worry about her, Grue. She'll need a few days to make anything useful."

"How sure are you?"

Knowitall shrugged. "Ninety ... five percent. Ish."

Fancypants laughed. "Well, that has no chance of blowing up in our face. Well, maybe a five percent chance."

"Any chance we could tip off the Protectorate?" Skullface asked. "Let them know that Lung's making a move?"

Knowitall laughed. "If we told them what he was planning, they'd call it community service and what till he was done. But they'd be happy to offer us protective custody in a jail cell. We could run to Kaiser for help, but the Empire would definitely screw us over when they were done."

Fancypants raised his hand. "As long as we're getting screwed, I call dibs on the giant twins."

"Not like ... ugh."

"Are we still talking?" Fluffy growled. "Because I'm ready to start fighting something, and I'm not picky what." Around her, her dogs had gotten huge and ugly.

"You've been quiet," Skullface said, turning to Lift. Or Leaf, now that she was in costume. "Any thoughts?"

Leaf considered that. "Why don't we steal his dinner? Then Lung will be too hungry to fight us."

"Okay, nevermind," Skullface said.

"Wait!" Knowitall said. "That gives me an idea!"

The team went quiet. Until Fancypants broke the silence. "You're kidding me."


	5. Chapter 5

Leaf

Chapter Five

When Lisa joined the Undersiders, she had wanted to run ops. She'd be the girl in the chair at the computer, feeding intel to the team from a position of safety. Bitch had shot her down right from the start.

"_If you're taking an equal share,"_ she had said, "_you're gonna get your hands dirty too."_

It was rare to find a career villain so self aware. Usually people in their line of work got good at lying to themselves and told themselves that they weren't hurting anyone who didn't deserve it, that their hands were as clean as they ever were. Bitch was as crude and as cruel as they came, but she saw through that.

Lisa had never gotten the chance to take the backseat role she wanted, but her team kept her safe. Besides, working on the front lines gave her a chance to talk to so many interesting people.

"Hey, Fei Hong," she said to the fine owner of the Sea Dragon. "How's business? Looks slow, and on karaoke night too."

Fei Hong kept his hands where she could see them and away from the counter.

_Keeps glancing at counter. Keeps gun and silent alarm under counter, but won't use either. Used to submitting to authority, comfortable under authority, too much to leverage._

_Leverage. Debt? No, not in debt. Family. Large family, grew up in large family, started large family. Multiple college funds for children. Three, four children, probably four. _

"You d-don't need to do this. I've paid my fees for the month."

_Practiced stutter to appear afraid. Lung appreciates shows of fear in underlings. Not afraid. Practiced subservience. _

Tattletale shut off the flow of information and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, to the ABB. Though you do a lot more than that. This little place is Lung's favorite club when he's out of costume. Can't say why. I guess it's the ambiance, but personally, I prefer a place with a dance floor."

_Sophisticated. Small tables placed far apart. Designed for groups of one to four clients, favoring privacy and quiet over customer traffic. Strong oriental influence on decoration. Performances and lighting designed to relax instead of excite. _

She looked over at Bitch who was pouring gasoline all over the floor. "What about you? Does this place seem fun to you?"

Bitch gave her a full body scowl that was perfectly readable through her plastic dog mask. "I thought we were torching the place."

Tattletale shrugged and turned back to Fei Hong. "I guess she's not a fan." She glanced down at his wedding ring, a simple gold band.

_He touches it when he's nervous. Has siblings nearby to help out at home in case of emergencies. Timid. Insecure about masculinity. Relies on others._

"By the way, how many of your wife's four kids do you think are yours? The second one looks the most like you, but he looks a lot like your brother too."

His eyes widened. "You ... you leave my family out of this!"

Tattletale held her hands up in a placating gesture. She needed to keep him off balance, but not manic. "Just making small talk, but if you want to get down to business, then let's get down to business. This is a robbery, so I'll need all the money in your cash register, all the money in the safe in your office, all the money in the secret safe behind the Xia Gui drawing in your office. You know the drill."

He did know the drill, and the robbery took no time at all. Again, Fei Hong was used to rolling over at the first sign of trouble. Or maybe he was just smart. Lung was a pyrokinetic and Oni Lee had a fondness for grenades, so after the gasoline was on the floor, the last thing he wanted was to call either of them for help. Bitch and Tattletale were at least willing to let him and the rest of the workers and patrons out before the building went up in flames.

After riding to a safe distance on Bitch's dogs, she sent a text to Grue telling him to go ahead. He'd hit an ABB facility on the other side of Lung's territory right when the man was on his way to the Sea Dragon. Lung was strong, but he wasn't fast enough to get to Grue's target before he got out. Oni Lee was, but out of all of them, Grue's power countered Oni Lee's the best. Besides, Grue was the most—no, the _only_ professional member of the team. He had enough experience to pull out before he got into trouble. Bitch was the strongest, but she wouldn't make the call to run when she had to run. Tattletale was the weakest, but she knew when to get out which was why they were paired together. Regent wasn't as lazy as he pretended to be, but he didn't work that much better alone than she did.

And then there was Leaf. She could have been one of the strongest capes in the city if her ruthlessness matched her potential, but she feigned childish innocence in every word she spoke. She had grown up surrounded by people who were less likely to hurt a child, instead of by hardened gang members who would only be encouraged by an easy target. She had experience, but the problem was that she had all the _wrong_ experiences for this sort of job.

Tattletale wondered if Leaf had ever participated in an Endbringer event.

A growing part of her wondered if Leaf even knew what that was.

But for the most part, she waited. She stood on a rooftop hearing nothing but the low, coarse breathing of Bitch's dogs, watching Grue's target through a pair of binoculars. If something bad happened, her power would pick up on some faint clue and warn her of trouble.

Tattletale smiled at the double entendre, and she waited. From the safety of a rooftop, she looked through a pair of binoculars at the location where Grue was striking, hoping that her power would warn her in the case of trouble.

And it did. She pulled out her phone to call him, but it didn't go through. That was one of the downsides to his power. It blocked cell phone reception, whether he wanted it to or not.

So she waited and hoped for the best. It wasn't like she could do anything else. Besides, Grue could take care of himself. Yeah. Everything was fine.

WWW

Grue was surrounded by the blind and the deaf, the mute and the invisible. They waved guns around wildly and called for help in voices that only he could hear. He answered their cries by punching them.

That was his approach to most problems. Bored? Punch something. Worried? Punch something. Angry? You better believe he was going to punch something. It didn't matter if the thing he was punching was a face, a bag, or a wall. That was just how he dealt with things.

Of course, there was some finesse involved. He had to take care that the thugs were facing well away from each other before he decked them, lest any of them get hit by stray shots. He'd also learned to prioritize the twitchy ones first before they could just start shooting wildly. It took patience and good timing to land the right hits. But in the end it was always the moment of impact that made him feel like he was accomplishing something.

When he was finished, he shook some feeling back into his hand and set about the next part of his job. The warehouse was full of heroin in the process of being packaged. Skidmark's gang was most known for drug dealing, but that was because he wasn't any good at anything else. All the major gangs got in on the trade if they were big enough to hold territory, and the Azn Bad Boys was no different.

He began loading the drugs into a large duffle bag he brought with him, thinking about his mother. Was this what had nearly killed her? Had she gotten her drugs from the ABB before ending up in the hospital? Part of him wanted to take the drugs and dump it into the sewer as soon as he got outside, and let Brockton Bay's rats and cockroaches deal with the overdose for a change.

Another part of him, a treacherous, practical part, thought, _Heroin costs about fifty to a hundred dollars per gram. If I have five kilos in this bag, that could be worth half a million dollars!_ The Undersiders didn't deal drugs, but that was more due to the lack of a distribution infrastructure than anything else. The boss agreed to buy anything they stole, though, and even if he offered ten percent of the selling price to cover distribution, well, fifty grand went a long way.

He opened the door, but he didn't go out yet. Instead he took cover and let his darkness flow out before him. He heard gunfire.

_Fantastic._

He'd only beaten up the men who had stayed. Several other gangsters ran off when he showed up, and depending on how much help they'd managed to summon in a few minutes, he could be in trouble. His power worked best in enclosed spaces, but in the open anyone could fire at the moving pool of shadows until they got lucky. Making a run for it wasn't an option. Neither was calling for help. He was on his own.

That was fine. The plan was to hit three major ABB buildings right after each other to send Lung's people running before they had time to regroup, so the Undersiders had to split into two groups of two and one group of one. There wasn't a single member of the team Grue trusted to make a hit alone besides himself.

Continuing to pour darkness out into the street would just prolong the fight, and the ABB had more reinforcements than he did. Instead, he dispersed the darkness, letting it fade. Hiding in the darkness wouldn't be enough; he needed to catch his enemies in it, and that meant luring them in.

He heard some voices from outside, too muffled and distant for him to make out any words.

Then Oni Lee appeared in the room with him.

Grue made a noise that he was grateful no one on his team was around to hear. In his panic he threw up a cloud of darkness that enveloped Oni Lee before the man could attack. _Too close._ Oni Lee was a teleporter, but he required line of sight. When he was blind, his powers didn't work at all.

But the man didn't panic. Instead, he tossed a grenade up in the air without a care in the world.

Grue couldn't tell if it had a pin in it. He decided not to stay to find out.

He dove for the only cover within reach. That meant jumping through the window, but he'd risk getting shot from a distance over getting blown up at point blank.

The grenade exploded behind him, but his darkness muffled the sound for everyone besides himself. His first thought was to run. The job wasn't an attack, or even a heist, but harassment to put Lung on the defensive, and Grue had done that.

His second thought was that he had left behind a small fortune worth of drugs, and if the grenade hadn't destroyed the bag, then it would take only a few seconds to jump back in and grab it. If the grenade _had_ destroyed the bag, then he was inhaling a massive amount of narcotics right now.

His third thought was that Oni Lee must have teleported the instant after he appeared to escape Grue's darkness. He wouldn't have had time to turn his head, so he could only have teleported forward. He was probably still in the warehouse. If Grue could trap him in his darkness, he could beat him up, break the man's legs, and put the most mobile member of the ABB out of commission for the better part of the next _month._

His fourth thought was that people had started trying to shoot him, and if ABB gangsters were here and Oni Lee was here, Grue didn't want to wait for Lung to get here too. He ran, empty handed but alive.

WWW

Regent looked down at his phone. "Alright, we're up."

"_Finally_," Leaf said. "Robbing people ain't supposed to take so much _waiting_."

He shrugged, indifferent to the whole matter. Of course, he had been spending the last twenty minutes playing Cut the Rope on his phone, which Leaf didn't have yet. Which was a shame. The kid would probably enjoy a game that focused entirely on eating.

It wasn't his idea to get paired up with the new girl. They were the two least responsible members of the team, so the idea was that they would keep each other out of trouble. That didn't make much sense to him, but he was too lazy to put much thought into it.

"Since you can heal yourself," he said, "why don't you go first?"

She cocked her head. "I can heal you too."

"Yes, but I don't like getting shot."

She nodded. "Yeah, you seem like you wouldn't be good at dodging. If I had a gun, I'd shoot you first."

He shrugged modestly. "I do tend to have that effect on women. And men. And dogs." Rachel had said that the gun went off on its own, but Angelica had always had it in for him.

The target was an old office building, or at least it used to be. Like most buildings in the docks, it had been adapted to whatever people needed it for. These days, the ABB used it as a safehouse to keep what Regent hoped was large bags of money, but Leaf's imaginary friend Wyndle had found Lung's dinner in there too.

They slipped in without any trouble at all. Between Leaf's knife that could cut through anything and her imaginary friend/clairvoyant ability scouting ahead, the kid was a natural sneak. She spent a lot of time stopping and waiting for ... something. Her power to recharge or something. It was odd considering how impatient she had been earlier, but they managed to avoid running into any unexpected trouble.

She stopped in front of a door, turned to Regent and put a finger to her lips. Then she held up five fingers, made a gun with her hand, made a fist, conjured up a crowbar, a knife, and then a baseball bat with her power, and gave Regent a serious look.

Regent had no idea what any of that meant, so he gave her a thumbs up.

She nodded, held up five fingers, then four, three, two, and on, and then cut the door off its hinges with a sword. On the other side of the doorway, five men sitting at a table looked up in surprise before grabbing a gun, a crowbar, a knife, and a baseball bat.

_Oh,_ Regent thought. _That's what she meant._

Leaf slid into the room on her knees like soccer players sometimes did while celebrating a goal. Before the man with the gun could bring it to bear, she'd smacked it with her hand. The firearm glowed faintly and promptly fell to pieces. Another man took a swing at her with the crowbar, but she rolled out of the way. The linoleum tiles began to let off the same white smoke that Leaf was, and the man slipped and crashed into his comrade, sending them both to the ground.

As the glow faded another man charged her with a baseball bat. Leaf dove between his legs. When he turned around, he tripped over his suddenly untied shoelaces. The unarmed man tried to grapple her but couldn't seem to get a grip. It was Leaf instead who climbed up his back and pulled his shirt over his head, causing him to flail blindly before finally tipping over. While that was going on, the remaining man with the knife was sneaking up on her from behind.

Regent figured the kid had everything under control, but to avoid being _obviously_ useless, he reached out with his power and forced the knife hand to spasm and release the weapon.

Leaf then manifested a metal rod in her hand, which she swung upwards right between the man's legs. Regent cracked a smile as the man groaned, clutched his privates, and fell to the floor.

_Ah, nut shots. Will they ever __**not **__be funny?_

He zapped a few of them with his scepter while they were down, tasing them into submission. When they were finished (and the whole fight had taken no time at all), Leaf went over to a girl tied up in the corner.

The girl was about Regent's age, but other than that she wasn't that interesting. To him, at least. The whole frizzy hair and glasses thing had never done it for him. A hell of a chin, though. You could stab someone with a chin like that. "Here she is," Leaf said, removing her gag. "Lung's dinner."

The girl's eyes grew wide. "I'm his _what_?"

"Dinner," Leaf repeated. "Lung was gonna eat ya, but he ain't gonna no more."

Her face went pale. "He _eats_ people?"

Leaf nodded. "All the time. It's his main thing."

"I ... I thought that the giant flaming monster thing was h-his thing."

"Nope," Regent said, joining in. He had never heard of Lung's unique diet either, but the girl's reaction was pretty funny. "It's ninety percent eating people."

"Oh, god."

"But he ain't _gonna_," Leaf said. "'Cause we're stealing you. What's your name?"

The girl took a deep breath. "I-I guess that's better than staying here. I'm Angela."

Leaf smiled. "I'm Leaf, and he's Fancypants."

"Fancypants?" Angela repeated.

"That's Mr. Fancypants to you," he said, sticking out his chest.

Angela looked down quickly. "Sorry Mr. Fancypants."

Regent smiled behind his mask. He had no idea where Leaf was going with this, but so far it was fun.

"An-ge-la," Leaf said, enunciating each syllable. "Look at me. Life before death."

"W-what?"

"Say it. Life before death."

She swallowed. "Life before death."

Leaf nodded. "You're scared. That's fine. Be as scared as you need to be. But you ain't gonna die tonight, 'cause we're stealing you right proper. But before we do, we gotta steal some other people too."

"Other people that Lung is going to eat?"

Leaf shook her head. "No. People he's already eaten."

WWW

As they traveled further into the building, Angela talked about how she had ended up there. Her father owned a gas station. It wasn't a gold mine, but it was a business, and every business owner in ABB territory was expected to pay protection money. Angela didn't know if her father refused, tried to renegotiate the price, or just asked for more time, but the result was the same. Some ABB thugs broke into her home and dragged her off, either as payment or as a hostage to insure payment.

Regent was barely listening, though Leaf seemed to want to keep her talking. Lung and Oni Lee weren't here, and the few ABB members that were weren't a threat, so it didn't matter either way.

The next fight had more people in it, but turned out to be way easier. Their powers worked well together, and whenever he got close to over exerting himself, she could heal him before his power backfired. Honestly, he could have handled everyone in the building by himself with Leaf just supplying healing ... but that would have been too much work.

Still, they made a good team. She ran around like a cartoon character, he made everyone trip and drop their weapons like dumber cartoon characters, she healed him, and he tased them. He actually felt _useful _in a fight. It was like working with Bitch, only completely the opposite.

The prize turned out to be even more girls stuffed in a closet, so more of the same. These ones were cut up, though. Disfigured. It was an ABB thing, but not one that had never made sense to him. Okay, he understood sex slaves just fine. He had practically been raised by sex slaves, but those ones had been flawless—on the outside, at least. On the inside they were probably as messed up as he was, but at least they _looked_ good.

These ones didn't. One was missing an eye, and it looked like whoever had carved it out had only a general idea of where the eye was located. The next one had a fresh glasgow grin, preventing her mouth from closing all the way and leaving a trail of blood down her neck. The third had her nose cut off making her face look like a skull.

_Why?_ he thought. _If you're going to have sex slaves, why go out of your way to make them as ugly as possible? That's just __**dumb**__._ It was some sort of initiation ritual, and you couldn't get anywhere in the ABB unless you could carve someone's face up for no reason, but still. Dumb.

Leaf breathed light into the first one, and the girl's eye reformed inside her head. "What's your name?" Leaf asked, wiping dried blood from her face.

The girl blinked rapidly, taking a moment to look at everything inside the room besides Leaf. "W-what? Who are you?"

"I'm Leaf. That's Fancypants. Who are you?"

"I-I'm Emily." Emily had brown, wide-set eyes like a deer, though they remained unfocused as though she were trying to look at the whole room instead of at any one person. Her newly healed eye twitched and she blinked forcefully. "Why ... why are you here?"

Leaf took a finger and jabbed it at Emily's forehead. "You," she said slowly, "ain't forgot."

"O-okay."

"Say it. You ain't forgot."

"I'm ... I ain't forgot."

Leaf nodded. "Remember that." Emily's lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears, and Leaf moved on to the next one.

The girl with the glasgow grin looked up at her as Leaf approached, both eager and afraid. She received her healing like the first, and the loose flaps of skin along her cheeks reconnected. "What's your name?"

The girl ran her hands across her face, feeling for a scar that wasn't there. Her fingers came back red and she wiped her hand on her ripped and dirty jeans. "I'm Stephanie." Her blond hair was matted with blood and clung to her round face.

"Hello, Stephanie. Can you still smile?"

The corners of her mouth twitched, but that was as far as she got. She sagged and shook her head.

Leaf nodded. "That's okay. You don't gotta be strong every day. Not yet." She gave Stephanie a hug as the girl sat there, fists clenched but body limp.

"Are you people heroes?" the noseless girl asked, her voice muffled. "Are you here to rescue us?"

Leaf shook her head. "We ain't heroes." She blew in the girl's face, making her nose regrow. "Heroes don't hear people like us. We're thieves, and we're gonna steal you from Lung until you figure out how to steal yourself. Got a name?"

"It's Natalie." Natalie had dark skin and braided hair, and her eyes seemed too big for her head. She wiggled and touched her nose as it reformed, and wiped the blood off on her sleeve. "But—man that feels weird—but if you're saving us, doesn't that make you heroes? Like, by definition?"

Leaf shrugged. "You'd think so, but the world's messed up. You lot ready to go? Remember, we're thieves, so you gotta all be quiet."

The girls nodded and stood up. Regent turned to leave, trusting them to follow, and Leaf fell into step beside him. "You good?" she said under her breath.

Had he given any indication that he wasn't? "I'm fine," he said, but his voice came out kurt and snappish. Maybe ... maybe he just felt out of place watching her little first-aid therapy session. They were all bursting with fear and hope and anger and sadness and, and he was just watching, like he was deaf at a concert. He could tell things were happening, but they were all happening to other people. He felt left out and confused, and like most of his feelings, that translated into annoyance. "I'm just ready to get going. This is a heist, not a slumber party." God, he sounded like Brian.

Despite the time Leaf had spent being friendly with them, no one shot them on their way out. Either the men they fought on the way in were still unconscious or they had woken up and left, deciding that cape fights were above their pay grade.

"Well, mission accomplished," he said, tossing his scepter into the air as they emerged from the building. "I'd say see ya later, but I don't really keep in touch with people."

"What?" one of them said. Angelina, probably. "Y-you're leaving us? Now? At night? What if the ABB comes back for us? You can't just walk away."

Regent rolled his eyes. _You have no idea what I can walk away from._

"Hey, Fancy Pants," Leaf said, eyeing a van parked on the side of the road. "You know how to drive one of these car things?"

He glanced at the van and held his arms wide in self-presentation. "Girl, you are looking at the team champion of Mario-Kart." He let out a breath. "No idea how to hotwire one, though. You'd need the team champion of Grand Theft Auto, and that's actually Grue."

A small key appeared in her hand, made out of the same silvery metal as her sword, and she unlocked the van door.

She grinned at him.

He grinned at her.

Then he got hit by a truck.

_Ow._ The truck had long claws that dug into his shoulder as he was lifted up in the air, and tough, scaly skin. Lung. He got hit by a Lung. _Typical. I'm the only guy here, and he goes after me first. This man clearly does not respect women. _

He tased him, and Lung grunted. _Not the reaction I was hoping for._ Then Lung crushed every bone in his right arm. He could feel the fragments of bone grinding against each other. The pain was so intense that it forced an involuntary gasp from him, a pure physiological response. _**Definitely**_ _not the reaction I was hoping for!_

Regent hit Lung with all that his power could give, hoping to force him to let go. And it worked! Nice. He was worried that Lung's transformation would have made him immune or something, but the dragon man actually dropped him.

Only to kick him like a soccer ball. Bigger ow. Regent felt a moment of weightless disorientation before abruptly slamming into a brick wall. His body seemed to be pumping an awful lot of adrenaline into him and for a moment he felt strikingly aware of things bursting and breaking. Then he felt nothing at all below his waist. _Well, there goes my spine._

A fair number of his internal organs too, he suspected as he slumped to the ground, though he doubted that a doctor would show up any time soon to give him the details. He wondered if he was going to die. Brian had died, just last night actually. He had barely talked about it, but Regent got the impression that the experience was horrific beyond imagining.

Honestly, that made him a little curious.

Leaf appeared in front of him then, shining in the darkness. She breathed into him, and the parahuman healing hit him like a bucket of ice water. His bones unbroke, his organs unburst, and sensation returned to his legs. Leaf pressed something small and metallic into his hand.

Then she turned to Lung. "Hey Lung!" she shouted. "You _are_ Lung, right? Never met you, but I heard you're real ugly and got the power to get _even uglier._"

Lung growled something incoherent and charged. Instead of scrambling out of the way like a sane person (or Regent), she charged too. She was less than half his partially transformed height and had to be a fraction of his weight, but when had the laws of physics ever applied to cape fights?

She dove onto her belly at the last second and slid between his legs like a penguin, leaving a glowing trail behind her. Lung tried to stop and turn to follow her, but as soon as he stepped on the light he slipped. Watching an eight foot tall mutated flaming dragon-man fall on his face would have been hilarious if he weren't trying to kill everyone.

Actually, cross that. It was still hilarious.

Too bad that he couldn't stay to watch. He glanced down at the object Leaf had given him. The key from earlier. He never took the initiative in fights like these. If he started, people would expect that to become a habit, so he prefered to follow the lead of others.

And he knew that Leaf would want him to focus on stealing Lung's dinner.

He ran to the van as Leaf drew Lung further and further away from them. "Ladies," he said, opening the door. "Your carriage awaits."

WWW

_Are you sure you can handle this without me?_ Wyndle asked.

No, but sure was boring. Lift could end this fight in three seconds if she used Wyndle as a Shardblade, but she was a thief not a fighter, and thieves didn't leave bodies. Using him as a rod or a shield might come in handy, but not as handy as getting Lung's dinner the storms out of here. Besides, what was Lung gonna do to her? Bite her head off?

Maybe.

_Hey Wyndle. Remember what Ol' Whitehair said about thievin'?_

_The man who jumped into a greatshell's mouth and waved back?"_

_Yup. Said that the most important thing a thief can steal is herself. _She had done that long ago, and had never given herself back.

Lung raised a clawed hand and a stream of fire flew out of it like a skyeel. Lift slid out of the way, but she still felt the heat. Asphalt melted behind her and the air crackled as he tried to track her with the flames. Even as she evaded a direct hit, Lift could feel her skin blistering and searing, her awesomeness working swiftly to repair the damage. She dove and took shelter behind a parked truck.

_The second most important thing is pride._

The van Fancypants and the girls were in started up, and Lung turned toward the sound. Storms. If he went after them, well, Lift wasn't sure she had enough awesomeness left to heal them all. She had to keep his attention focused on her. Fortunately, she was Reshi, and her people had perfected the art of war.

"Hey Lung!" she shouted, sticking her head out from behind the truck. "You seem angry. Is it because you're hungry? Are you hangry because all your food has been going missing?"

The Reshi didn't stab each other like some brain dead Alethi. They just yelled insults at each other until one side gave up and walked away. She had never been to the Reshi isles, but she could only assume that they were the best at everything and everything they did made perfect sense.

"'Cause your lunch wasn't even that good, honest. It didn't have no cookies like it ought, so I gave it to Fluffy's dogs."

_Um, Mistress?_ Wyndle asked in her head. _Are you __**certain**_ _you don't need my assistance?"_

Lung turned to her as the van Fancypants was in drove off. He was bigger now, covered in metallic scales and human shaped in only the vaguest of terms. Another eel of fire flew towards her, but hit the truck she was hiding behind instead. The corners of her lips twitched upward. Was he even _aiming_ with those—

The truck burst into flames. Lift scrambled away from it as a wave of heat hit her, and flames pooled underneath and licked up the sides of the vehicle. _How?_ The thing was made up entirely of metal. How could it burn?

Then a crash hit the truck, interrupting her train of thought and knocking it over. She kicked away with her feet and slid on her butt to avoid being crushed as several tons of burning metal rolled toward her. By the time it stopped, Lung jumped over it holding a twenty-foot long street lamp in his hands like a club.

"Really?" she said, looking up at him. "You need a chill pill." She wasn't entirely sure what a chill pill was, but she suspected it had something to do with ice cream.

Lung raised the lamppost and swatted at her like she was a cremling that had gotten too close to the pie. With every strike he left craters in the asphalt, and on the third try he hit her, crushing her wrist with enough force to bend the metal pole. That wasn't deliberate on Lift's part, but she'd take it. She poured awesomeness into the lamppost, making it so Slick that when he raised it up into the air again it slipped right out of his grip. He stared at his empty hands and Lift scrambled to her feet.

Lung tore after her, shoving aside cars and signposts and any other obstacles in his way. Right, she could use that. She was small and could go through things that Lung would have to push out of his way. Could she jump through a window that Lung couldn't fit through? No, there might be people in that unlucky building, and she couldn't risk involving them. But what she _could _do was ...

She darted down an alley and scrambled up the ladder of a fire escape. Lung caught up with her before she could climb the stairs, and even with his feet still on the ground he put enough weight on the platform it sloped toward him. He was nearly large enough to grab her with his freakishly long arms, but nearly was only nearly what he needed.

Lift poured almost all of her remaining awesomeness into the fire escape until the whole thing glowed, waved at Lung, and did a completely necessary backflip off the platform right before five stories of stairs and railings came crashing down on Lung's head.

"But anyway," Lift said, never one to leave a good insult half done, "Fluffy's dogs didn't want none neither, and little One Ear widdled in the rice, so in the end—"

A sharp pain struck at her knees, cutting her off mid-taunt. Lift cried out in surprise as much as pain as she fell face first to the ground. A man with a monstrous mask kicked her onto her back and skewered her through the shoulder with a sword, pinning her to the ground. Lift gritted her teeth as she felt her awesomeness draining to keep her alive.

"Shall I kill her on your behalf, sir?" Oni Lee asked, without taking his eyes off of her. "Or do you wish her taken alive?"

She couldn't feel her feet. _Why_ couldn't she feel her feet? She lifted her leg and looked down and found stumps where her knees used to be. _Um, Wyndle? If you really want to, you can come back now. This might be easier with both of us. _

Lung didn't say anything. He wasn't big like a thunderclast or a greatshell, but when you were Lift-sized he was big enough. The air around him rippled with heat, and even Oni Lee winced and turned away as he drew near. Lung raised one massive, clawed hand over Lift. It burst into flames.

_Wyndle? Are ... where are you?_ She could regrow her legs with enough time and food, but she had neither right now.

Without warning Oni Lee ripped the sword out of her, but he stumbled as though off balance—then his arm jerked and he stabbed himself in the foot. Lift immediately Slicked her back and pushed herself away ... only to bump into another copy of Oni Lee who had teleported behind her.

"No fair!" she yelled as Oni Lee raised his sword, and then everything went black.

Lift opened her eyes wide, but it was still black. Black and as silent as ... as Skullface's darkness. Paddling with her arms she slid along the road until she could see again.

The Oni Lee that had chopped her legs off crumbled to dust, leaving only the Oni Lee trapped in the darkness. She had a feeling Skullface was in there with him, punching him in the face.

Meanwhile Lung was where Lift had last seen him, but now had Fluffy's three dogs all over him. Their monstrous forms were regrowing flesh and bone as fast as Lung could incinerate it. Lung himself was bigger than ever now, but two of the dogs had each seized an arm in their jaws, while the third did its level best to bite his head off. Fancypants was there too, standing in the distance and waiting for his moment while Knowitall glanced up and down at her phone.

But the most important person she saw was Wyndle. "You're back!" she said as his vines grew in a circle around her. "What took you?"

"Distance, Mistress. Cars can traverse a great deal of it in a short time. Of course, after I abandoned physical form, I could no longer communicate directly to your mind."

Lift nodded. "So you was sulking 'cause I left you behind?"

"What? No, that's not—"

"Wanna be a sword?"

"Er, what?"

There was an explosion of fire and searing heat, sending Fluffy's dogs flying. Lung's mask was gone, revealing a split mouth and inhuman face, and he was still growing. His carapace covered his entire body making the dogs' teeth about as useful as Lift's own, and he now had skeletal stubs sprouting from his back.

When they had planned for the night, the Undersiders had decided not to fight Lung no matter what. They could run, hide, and distract him, as long as they got away. But the only way the whole team could outrun him was by dog, so Lift needed to come up with another way to slow Lung down.

"His twitchy friend stole my feet and Lung eats people. Wanna be a sword?"

Lung stretched out his arms and filled the street with flames, sending the Undersiders scrambling for cover. Fluffy cursed as she got burned, and her dogs made sounds closer to yips and whines then growls.

"Oh alright," Wyndle sighed. "But please be careful. I'm very sharp."

Lift didn't hold her hand out for him just yet. She needed her hands to move. Lying on her stomach, she Slicked her body and slid toward the fight. Lung spotted her out of the corner of his eye, but he ignored her as one of the dogs leapt at him. People that big always ignored people as small as Lift, especially when they were busy with more important things like the jaws of a giant dog.

The ground was sizzling hot and partially melted as Lift got close. It burned like a stove and would have cooked her alive if not for her awesomeness by the time she reached him. At the last second, she held out her hand and Wyndle filled it as a blade of silvery metal, and she sliced through Lung's legs. Wyndle blurred as he made contact, ignoring Lung's flesh and bones and instead cutting through the spirit that filled them.

Lung let out an inhuman scream and crumbled to the ground. The two remaining dogs piled on top of him, trying to bite through his armored shell.

"Bitch!" Knowitall said. "Time to go!"

"I can finish this!" Fluffy said. Lung flailed around, but even though he was stronger than her dogs, he didn't have a leg to stand on and the dogs could play tug-of-war with his arms.

"No need! White hats incoming. Let them clean this up."

The cloud of darkness disappeared, leaving Skullface standing over Oni Lee, who was lying on the ground. "How much time?"

Knowitall shrugged. "Just enough, give or take."

He nodded, ran over to Lift, and picked her up. "Alright everyone, we're pulling out."

Fluffy called her dogs off of Lung, Skullface covered him in darkness so he couldn't throw any more fire at them, and the Undersiders rode off into the night. They didn't go very fast with one of the dogs to hurt to run, and that was fine because Lift was hurt pretty bad too. She wasn't bleeding anywhere, but she had run out of awesomeness before she could heal her burns, and between her stumpy legs and the gnawing hunger in her stomach, she would have fallen off her dog if Skullface hadn't been hanging onto her.

"Hey, Skullface?"

"Grue," Skullface said. "Yes?"

"On the way back, could we stop to get something to eat?"

WWW

"Well, I think we can say that the plan was a colossal screw up."

Lift let the conversation go on around her while she focused on more important things, like regrowing her feet.

"Screw up?" Lisa said. "It went better than expected. The heroes would have brought Lung in after the state we left him in, and they might be able to hold him long enough to put him on trial. Oni Lee too if we're lucky, and if we're not he's still going to be in a wheelchair for the next month. The only cape left in the ABB in fighting shape is the bomb Tinker, and she'd have to be completely insane to come after us after the beating we laid down tonight."

Lift scarfed down her third burrito and felt a tingle in her stumps. It was weird not having legs, like, she could still wiggle her toes, but her toes didn't have a body anymore. Her power helped to ... refill the gaps? Sure.

"That's the point," Brian said. "The plan was to not fight him at all. We were supposed to harass his territory to distract and wear him down until he was forced to go on the defensive. Instead we did the opposite of that. _We_ won, but the plan failed. We were just lucky, and lucky isn't good enough."

They had stopped by a Taco Bell on the way back while Rachel was tending to her dogs. The pale, blotchy fellow working there looked at them in their costumes, muttered a complaint about how little he was paid, and didn't ask any questions.

"Okay, okay," Lisa said. "So we learn from our mistakes. We underestimated how smart Lung was. We hit one of his buildings on the north east side of his territory, then the south east, and he caught on that we were going to attack something in the west right after that. But we were stronger than he gave us credit for too, so it all balances out. And this way we can say that Lung got beat up by a little girl."

Rachel looked up at that. "What? My dogs did most of the work."

She had a point. They took most of the hits too, but it turned out they were dogs in dog suits, and only their suits got damaged. After they stopped to pull the dogs out, they were fine.

"It was a team effort, so we all beat Lung," Brian said. "And we're going to stick together as a team from now on. No more splitting up, no matter how clever it seems at the time."

"Don't you know," Alec said in a singsong voice, "you never split the party. Clerics in the back, keep those fighters hale and hearty." He stopped when he noticed the look Brian was giving him. "What? You've heard that song before. You're not mad at me, are you?"

"You left Lift to fight Lung all by herself. So yeah, I'm mad at you."

He shrugged while lying down on the couch. "It was her idea. I thought she could handle it." He hesitated. "Okay, now that I say that out loud ..."

"And I could," Lift protested, speaking up for the first time. She swallowed the remains of her fifth burrito. "I was fine until Twitchy-Twitch showed up. But Alec was able to get Lung's dinner out of there, and that's what matters."

"You know Lung wasn't literally going to ..." Brian started. "Nevermind."

Yeah, she knew what Lung was going to do to them. Of course she knew. She'd met plenty of whores and knew more than a few slaves, but to force someone into being both at once and carve 'em up inside and out just to prove you could, well, there just weren't a whole lot of words for that.

She'd have to visit them some time. Angela, Emily, Stephanie, and Natalie. Just because the four girls had made it home didn't mean that she could forget them. Everyone else would, but she'd made a promise.

"Maybe," Alec said, "we should be asking the _important_ questions. Like whether or not Lift can eat an entire Taco Bell party pack by herself, and if her Brute rating is high enough to handle the fast food version of Russian Roulette."

Lift stuffed the sixth one in her mouth. "Ahm haff ay 'ere."

"Lovely display, Lift," Lisa said. "Truly, beautiful. You should never not push yourself to the limit, no matter how sick you make the people watching."

Lift smiled, her cheeks full of beans, cheese, and tortilla wrapping. The texture reminded her of something she had gotten from a Herdazian once, but they didn't have cheese on Roshar. Which was a starvin' crime. Chocolate neither, which was an even bigger crime. Hmm. She needed to try a chocolate burrito some time. Until then, the normal kind got the job done.

For the first time since her fight with Lung, _stood up._ Her legs still felt a little tingly, but they worked, they were hers, and ... and they had never touched Roshar. The legs that had carried her from Rall Elorim to Azimir and all through Shadesmar, the legs that her mother had taught her to walk with when she was a baby ... she had left them behind because it was easier to regrow a leg than reattach it to a closed stump.

She didn't like thinking about that, so she didn't. She chewed and swallowed. "So. What are we robbin' next?"

WWW

A/n So here's the next chapter. A huge thanks to Exiled Immortal who beta read and edited this chapter, as well as shared his unequaled talent of writing fight scenes, which I have never been good at.


	6. Chapter 6

Leaf

Chapter Six

Home always smelled like clemabread. Hot clemabread, fresh from the oven, stale clemabread so hard it would break her teeth, and crumbs of clemabread that had the same taste of stale clemabread but wouldn't fill her stomach. Lift had been seeing more and more of the crumbs recently, and even that was growing rare, which made the smell of fresh hot bread so much ... smellier.

Lift offered to help with the baking, but that was mostly for the excuse to stay in the kitchen. Mother was missing one and a half fingers on her right hand that had fallen off when she was younger than Lift, but that didn't slow her down. Still, as long as Lift was nearby there were always bowls to be licked, crumbs to be snatched up, and smells to be smelled.

She smelled spices. Heldin mostly, a bit of sasna, and some ralt at the end. Lift's face fell in disappointment. Spices was expensive, and expensive was for other folks. Lift was left to smell the smells and imagine eatin' what was in the oven.

But when Mother pulled them from the oven, she gave them to Lift.

"Mine?" she whispered, holding the first roll. It was bright and hot, like a piece of the sun in her hands.

"No. I need you to take these to Sev Bren. Can you do that for me?"

Lift's hopes dashed to bits all over again. "What, all of them?"

"I think she'd appreciate knowing that we're thinking of her at a time like this."

Time like this. Mother always talked about it, but only about it. Never said that Sev Bren's son Del had got plagued real bad, then he got pyred and ashed, only said that it was a time like this.

Well, so what? Del had a face like a chull and a laugh like a horse, and bein' dead didn't change that. Bein' dead didn't make you hungry neither, living made you hungry.

"Can I have just one?"

"No. They're for Sev. All of them. Can I trust you?"

"But I'm hungry!" Sheer torture it was, giving a kid fresh rolls but not lettin' her eat none.

Mother knelt down on the stone floor and looked her straight in the eye. She held her gaze until she was sure Lift was listening, and said, "When your stomach is empty, fill your heart. And when your heart is empty, fill your stomach." That was one of her little sayings. Lift didn't understand it none, but Mother was crazy like that. Midna Thrade always said so, and she talked to shadows so she'd know. "And Sev Bren needs to remember that she's not alone, even when she is. So again, can I trust you?"

Lift's shoulders sagged, but she nodded her head.

Mother smiled. She didn't smile with just her mouth or her eyes, but with her whole face, all squeezed and stretched like dough. "That's my little girl."

Mother stuffed her pockets with rolls and filled a sack with the rest. You didn't want to take it all in the sack because they'd be too easy to steal. Besides, the rolls felt warm through her clothes, like little hugs.

"Hurry, now. Supper will be ready by the time you get back."

That would have been a better bribe if Lift didn't know what they were having. Gruel. Again. Brown clema mush with chopped tretta roots for extra misery. Expensive was for other folks, so they could save the cheap for home.

As soon as home was out of sight, Lift started thinking. Rolls were best fresh, and by the time she got to Sev's place they wouldn't be nearly as hot, which was a straight-up crime. And it wasn't like Sev knew how many Mother was sending her. If one less arrived, who would say? She didn't know that Mother was sending any, so who would say if none arrived at all?

It was one of those days that Lift would remember years later, and regret.

WWW

Lift followed her nose, which was what she always did, and found the kitchen on fire.

"Hey, Lisa," she said. "Whatcha cookin'? Smells exciting."

Lisa poured white powder over the stove until the fire died down. "A crude bomb. Also, humility."

Lift made a face. "A humility bomb? Ain't no one wants that for breakfast."

Lisa fanned the smokey air with a towel while covering her nose. "No, no they do not. I thought it might be fun to make something for the team, but I'm starting to realize why I eat out all the time. How do you feel about IHOP?"

"Why dontcha just use your smartness powers? Bet you could unravel a recipe easy, no blood sweat or tears."

Lisa rolled her eyes. "Yes, but I like to save my powers for more important things than breakfast. Is that a no on IHOP?"

Lift narrowed her eyes. "More important than breakfast?"

She shrugged. "I only get a few hours of superhuman brilliance a week. Then I'm stuck with a headache for breakfast worse than ten humility bombs."

"More important than breakfast?"

"I guess the idea that there are more important things than food would be rejected out of hand."

Lift frowned thoughtfully. "'Kay, I got an idea." Awesomeness was awesomeness, right? Besides, it had worked for Alec the night before. She got up close to Lisa and blew in her face. Smokey white awesomeness flowed into her mouth and up her nose, and even a little bit went into her eyes. "Feel smarter now?"

Lisa blinked ... then stared. She stared at nothing that was and at all the things that weren't. She stood like a statue, eyes flickering towards a thousand invisible ideas as for the first time in her life she used her powers for what they were truely meant for.

"I know," she whispered finally, "what I want for breakfast."

WWW

What followed could not be put into words. Let it be said only that even as words cannot describe every experience, reason alone cannot comprehend all of reality, and sometimes, even when they shouldn't, the universe works out perfectly. The skeptic might call it a fluke, the credulous a miracle, and few others—possibly only one other—would call it breakfast.

WWW

"Well, that hit the spot," Lisa said, lounging on the couch, her discarded plate lying on the coffee table.

"Mm-hm," Lift replied, sprawled out on the other couch, her face covered in the remains of her last meal.

"Chocolate covered calamari shouldn't be a thing, but it works. The vinegar really tied it all together."

"Huh." Lift had had an idea once where she would use her powers on a plant to make it grow fruit and eat it for infinite awesomeness. Wyndle had said that wouldn't work and started rambling about the laws of the universe, but Lift had nearly managed that. She gave Lisa some of her awesomeness, and Lisa gave her food. Lift one, universe zero.

She sat up when she heard Brian enter the room. He had loud footsteps even for a guy his size, so it was good his darkness could muffle sound. He sniffed the air as soon as he came in. "Did you guys try to cook something?"

Lisa flashed a smile. "Try, he says. Try! Ha!"

"You can have some if you want," Lift said. "But then you gotta do the dishes. And save some for Rachel and Alec."

"Rachel won't want any," Lisa said. "She doesn't eat chocolate. It's a solidarity thing."

"What is it?" Brian asked, peering into the pot.

"It's ... something you want to try before knowing what it is."

"She doesn't eat chocolate?" Storms, no wonder she was always so grumpy.

Brian paused for a long moment. "I see tentacles in there."

Lisa shrugged. "A lot of things have tentacles."

"Like Wyndle," Lift said.

"These are vines," Wyndle said.

Brian pulled himself away from the kitchen. "I already ate." He went to bang on Alec's door. "You still in bed, man? It's past eleven."

There was a groan from the other side of the door.

"Well, we won't be able to get started until Alec crawls out of there, and Rachel is, what, walking her dogs?"

Lisa nodded. "Walking her dogs."

"While we're waiting, Lift, there's something I want to talk to you about. You're the last person I would have wanted to throw at Lung, but you really held your own. Have you been in combat much since you got your powers?"

Lift chewed her lip thoughtfully. During a heist, she only needed to fight if she got caught, and then it was better to run. She had fought Darkness, but that barely counted. Their fight had mostly been her trying not to die as she convinced him that he was crazy and that the world had ended.

What else? Oh, right, she had been at that battle with the Alethi Warlord, the Assassin in White, and the other Surgebinders, but she had been there to steal God's dinner, not fight nobody.

"Nope," she said. "Haven't needed to."

Brian nodded. "I guess that's the advantage to sticking to small crimes. Hardly anyone tries to kill you for stealing a cake, but if you stick with us Lung won't be the last cape to come after you. You can't run from every fight, and if your enemies know you can beat them, they'll try to run first."

Lift raised an eyebrow. "So, what? You're gonna teach me to fight?" That sounded boring. It was no fun stealing from folks you could beat up; that was just being a bully. The risk of getting caught was what made it fun.

"You came close to getting killed last night, and that would have been on me for putting you in that position. I'd feel a lot better if I knew you could defend yourself."

Lift rolled her eyes, but she couldn't really argue with that, so she got up. "Fine, fine. How's this work?"

He smiled at her and stood in the middle of an open space in the room. "First, no powers."

Her jaw dropped. "What? That ain't fair. You're bigger than two of me!"

"And Lung was bigger than five of you. Also, your powers run out, don't they?"

Lift looked down at the floor. "Only when I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry. If you know how to fight, you'll need to rely on your powers less so you can save them for when you need them the most. Also, this is a sparring match. It's not about winning, it's about learning. And ... that's it. So come at me and show me what you're capable of."

Well, she was capable of running away, which is what she'd try if she was faced with someone Brian's size and couldn't use her awesomeness. She could kick him in the nadgers too, but he might take that sort of thing personal. No, if she was gonna fight him, she was gonna fight like a thief.

"Oh, hey Alec," she said, looking behind him. "You're finally up."

Brian glanced over his shoulder at Alec's closed door, and Lift charged him, punched him in the gut ... and nearly sprained her wrist. Brian apparently did a lot of sit ups.

"Good thinking there," he said, looking down at her. "A distraction at the right time can make all the difference—if you know how to use it."

The punch would have done more if she was awesome, but there was nothing for it. She grabbed onto his leg and heaved with all her might to throw him off balance, but it was like wrestling a tree.

Alright, that's not working. As a last ditch effort, she scrambled up his back, perched herself on his shoulders, and tried to rip his head off.

"You two having fun?" Lisa said from the couch. Lift glared at her.

"Alright," he said. "I think I have a better idea of what I'm working with." He plucked her up off his shoulders and set her on the ground. "Let's start with the basics: how to punch."

WWW

After finding out that even a perfectly executed punch from Lift's skinny arms wouldn't do crem (she didn't know what he was expecting), Brian let her use Wyndle, 'cause even though awesomeness ran out, Wyndle lasted forever. And the starvin' spren could make forever seem like a long time.

A Shardrod appeared in her hand, and she whacked Brian in the knee. I'm not enjoying this, Wyndle muttered. She hit him again, Brian caught it, and Lift dismissed the Shardrod, made it reappear, and jabbed Brian in the gut. I'm a gardener, for Mother's sake. This is soldier's work.

"You're keeping your distance, good," he said. "As long as I can only grab your weapon, you can keep me on the defensive. But sometimes your enemies have weapons too." He pointed a finger at her as though it were a gun. "If this happens, what do you do?"

She formed a Shardshield, blocking Brian's imaginary line of fire, deflected a few imaginary bullets, and threw the shield at him like a discus. Brian blocked it with his arm, but he needn't have bothered. Shardblades were famously light, and if they couldn't cut you they couldn't do much else neither. Brian pointed his finger at her and pulled an invisible trigger. "Blam."

Lift spun around and threw herself to the floor. "Argh! You've killed me dead! All me blood and guts're spewin' out. Oh! A light! I see ..." She let out her last breath and went limp with her tongue hanging out. As an afterthought she kicked her foot in a death spasm.

Lisa began clapping softly and rapidly. "Woohoo! Encore, encore!"

The door opened and seven pairs of legs came in. "Who died?" Rachel asked.

"Lift," Lisa said. "There was an epic battle and everything. You just missed it."

Lift wrinkled her nose when one of Rachel's dogs started sniffing her. "Huh," Rachel said. "I thought we were having a meeting."

"Yes," Brian said. "We were just waiting for you to get back and for Alec to get out of bed." He banged on the door again. "For god's sake, Alec! How long does it take for you to wake up?"

Alec made a noise that sounded like, "Uwa umawa. Summa muvama."

Sighing, Brian turned the doorknob and barged in. A moment later he came back with Alec mostly cooperating. Alec squinted around the room with a look on his face that said, "I'm going to be here, but I'm not going to be awake for this."

"That's fine," Brian said. "Lift, stop being dead. The sooner we get through this, the sooner we can all get back to our own things."

Lift sat up. "Stop being dead? You act like death has lost all meaning."

Brian gave her a flat look, and Lift stared back innocently.

"Aw, you guys made me breakfast?" Alec sniffed the air as he wandered into the kitchen, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. "Thanks. You should have led with that."

Brian hoisted Lift off the floor and tossed her into one of the couches before sitting down himself. "Right. So first on the list, Lung and Oni Lee. What's their status?"

"The PRT got Lung, but Oni Lee must have teleported away before they showed up," Lisa said. "I mean, if you would have blindfolded the guy and tied him up ..."

Brian shook his head. "Letting the heroes scavenge our fights is one thing, but if we start gift wrapping villains for them, we're going to start looking like vigilantes."

"And no one likes vigilantes," Alec said.

"Besides, he won't be walking on his own for a while, and he'll be too busy holding crutches to pull out his sword. Maybe with him in charge, the ABB will know to keep their distance from us."

"If he ends up in charge," Lisa said. "It's either going to be him or the bomb Tinker they just recruited, and I'd bet on anyone who's not Oni Lee."

Brian frowned. "You think the ABB would follow someone who just joined the gang over their oldest remaining cape?"

Lisa shrugged. "He's not leadership material. I don't know much about Bakuda, but they might just split up into two groups, or the gang could dissolve entirely. You know, if we're lucky. We'll just have to wait and see."

"We did get credit for Lung though, right?" Alec asked.

"Not really." Lisa looked down at her phone. "The PRT published a statement this morning saying ... hold on, let me pull it up. Here it is. 'Armsmaster—'"

"Goddamnit, Armsmaster."

"I ... didn't finish."

Alec waved a hand at her to continue.

"'Armsmaster successfully ambushed and defeated the villain Lung, leader of the ABB last night, who was weakened from a previous encounter with a rival gang. Lung was taken to the PHQ for holding until blah blah blah trial, blah blah blah Birdcage, blah blah blah.'"

"We so need our own PR team," Alec said between bites. "This whole word of mouth shtick is never going to get me my own merchandising line. How much does one cost on the black market?"

Lisa shrugged. "If I can find some starving humanities major willing to work as an unpaid intern, nothing. I mean, they'd be limited to spamming the PHO, but ..." She shrugged again. "You could do that yourself if you wanted to, you know, make the effort."

"Speaking of getting paid," Brian said, "you and Rachel were the only ones who got anything last night. You're splitting that with us, right?"

Lisa smiled at Rachel. "What do you think?"

Rachel frowned. "How much did we make?"

"Just a few thousand. Split that five ways, and we'd be lucky to get a grand each. Some of it will take a few days to liquidate."

Rachel frowned. "Might as well split it then."

"Fair enough," Lisa said. "Team rules. We go in together, we come out together. I was kind of hoping for a bigger haul. I guess Lung and Lee interrupted the rest of you?"

Brian nodded. "Lee hit me right on my way out. I literally had a bag full of ..." He shook his head. "And we were planning on hitting another six targets before calling it a night. Hey, any chance we could still go through with that? It's a shame to let a good plan go to waste, and with only Bakuda left ..."

Lisa shook her head. "Right now the ABB is either imploding—and we don't want to touch that—or turtling down and any target we hit wouldn't be worth the effort. Now, if you wanted to start establishing territory this would be the prime time, but we'd need more henchmen to hold it than the zero we have right now."

He nodded again. "Well, I think that's about everything. Unless anyone has something else to add, we're done."

"I got something," Lift said. "Me and Alec found some girls last night. What happened to them?"

"I thought I told you," Alec said. "I took them a block away, got out of the car, and let them drive off. Unless they fell through one of the bottomless potholes around here, they probably made it home."

"But where's that? I wanna check on 'em." She had made a promise after all. Not to them, but to herself. Promises made to other folks didn't matter much, but one to herself ... if she didn't remember those ones, no one would.

"I don't think they'd make good henchmen," Alec said. "Henchgirls? Henchers? Though if any of them want a job as a maid that'd be great. The dishes around here don't seem to be doing themselves like they're supposed to."

Lift ignored him and kept her eyes on Lisa. If she were back in Azir, she'd ask one of the noodles for this sort of thing, but Lisa could out-noodle any noodle who ever noodled.

"I mean, I could find out," Lisa said. "But are you sure that's a good idea? It was a nice thing you did for them, but nice isn't the sort of reputation we're going for. We're villains; hero complexes are for other people. Besides, sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is to give them space."

Lift remembered how Brian had been with his dying mother. He's always there when you need him, but when you don't ... Then she remembered her own mother who wasn't only there when she was needed, but also when she wasn't needed. When folks got sick she went to see them, and they wanted to see her because she was there when they was well, and when they died she stayed to see the folks they left behind. She had been everywhere all the time, like God, only done right.

"But you can find 'em," Lift said. "How much you want for it?"

"I wasn't trying to bargain with you, but fine." She pursed her lips together. "Give me a few boosters when I need them? I'd like to use my powers more freely, maybe cook lunch too while I'm at it."

"Speaking of," Alec said, "what is it? It tastes okay, but the texture is just ... it's going to bother me all day."

WWW

There was a right and a wrong way to rain. Rain ought to have some oomf to it. The Stormfather needed to burst through center stage yellin', "It's party time, y'all!" Right now though, the storms didn't feel like putting in the effort and were just ... drooling on everyone.

Lift walked through the puddles, mildly soaked but not drenched. The streets were like that too, not wet enough for the grease and dirt to get washed away, but enough for all the funk to float around a bit.

Lisa had written down some addresses for her, and Lift had shown them to Wyndle 'cause he could read. She wasn't dumb. She could learn letters if she wanted, but she had never had the chance when she was small and now not knowing how to was a challenge. There were so many words on every sign and wall she felt like she was living in a book, and to live in a book, see nothing but scribbles, and still win, well, that was really winning.

Angela hadn't been home. Lift had snuck into her house, found nothing, and had left nothing but a damp patch on the carpet. She'd try again later, but out of everyone, Angela had been hurt the least. Next was Emily.

Emily didn't live in an apartment like Angela, but in a house. It was small, old, and had vines growing up the walls, but Lift had lived in old shanties full of life and preferred them to palaces.

Lift walked across the unkempt lawn. Kempt lawns had the grass all the same length and their owners looked down at their neighbors who had yards full of wildflowers, 'cause people didn't make much sense.

She wasn't sure what she was gonna say to her if she was home. Play it by ear most likely, which was what she always did. She had nearly gotten herself killed a few times, but each time she had gotten herself in trouble and gotten herself out. The four girls she met last night had done neither. They'd got tossed around like a grubby rockbud, like a thing. When you started seeing other people as things, that was bad, but when you started seeing yourself as a thing? Trouble.

She peered in through the windows and climbed inside when she didn't see no one. She made all the water on her slide off in a puddle and began looking around. She saw furniture, couches that smelled of smoke, a table with scratched wood, and a television fabrial, but no people. There was a cat, though.

Cats didn't bark like dogs, and this one didn't seem to mind that Lift was trespassing. "Hey, cat," Lift said. "Is your human home?"

The cat made no reply, but Lift heard a creak from the other side of the house, and a face appeared around a corner. Her hair was wet, but her clothes were dry as though she had just taken a shower.

Ah, she thought. There you are.

WWW

Emily stared ahead at the intruder in her living room, and a surge of panic went through her. Nowhere is safe. It didn't matter that she was too afraid to leave the house when anyone would just break in.

"Who are ... what are you doing here?" The intruder was a girl younger than she was for what it was worth, but Emily doubted that was worth very much. She had heard that some people grew stronger when frightened and could lash out when cornered, but she was just the opposite. She had learned that for herself just the night before. I could scream. The neighbors probably wouldn't do anything even if they heard, but I could still scream.

"Tresspassin'," she said. The girl looked at her, her head tilted. "You ain't forgot me already? 'Cause I ain't forgot you."

Emily's eyes widened. You ain't forgot. She'd recognize the slurred drawl anywhere, and the near verbatim repeat of last night's promise was a dead giveaway. "You! You're ... you're not wearing your mask."

"Nope."

She felt stupid pointing out the obvious, but her brain was mostly inactive. "And your eyes are a different color." They had been a brilliant white the night before, shining like diamonds, and now they were brown like hers.

"Are they? Hadn't checked."

"And you know where I live," Emily said. "How do you know where I live?"

Leaf grinned. "I'm mysteriously pow'ful. And I got a clever friend. You seemed about to fall apart last night, so I wanted to see how you were holdin' up."

See how she was holding up? Was that normal? Most of what she knew about capes she had learned from the movies where the hero ended the rescue by flying upwards toward the camera. The rescuee either ended up as the love interest or was never seen again. "I'm fine." Physically, at least. There wasn't a scratch on her, and as for the rest ... well, she was coping.

Leaf nodded patiently but said nothing, and soon the silence sucked more words out of her.

"I'm fine," she said again. That's what everyone had told her. Thank God you're okay, her dad had said, so she must have been, right? And even if she wasn't ready to go back to school, even if every time she closed her eyes she saw that gangster carving her face and feeling his knife scrape against her eye socket, and even if she wanted to scream so much she couldn't breath, she was holding it together. Because she was fine. And that was a house of cards she wasn't going to pick at. "I ... I never got the chance to thank you. For saving me." That was how the script went, wasn't it?

"I didn't save you. I stole you."

Stole? Oh. Oh. She was starting to understand. Why else would Leaf track her down like this? Everything cost money, even heroes. "How much do I owe you?" She hoped it was just money. Her family didn't have a lot, but with money, once it was done it was done. Right now, she'd give anything to just be done.

"Owe? What do you owe the last lot as took you? Nothin'. Same as me. You don't owe no one a starvin' thing. But you're stolen all the same, so there's only one thing for it. You needsta steal yourself."

"I ... have to steel myself?" she said, following along as best she could. She was normally much fresher right after she took a shower, but right now she felt like she had a head full of cotton and knees full of jelly.

Leaf nodded. "I've always been a thief, but it didn't matter what I stole 'til I stole me. Once I was mine, I could steal the sky just by lookin' at it."

Oh, steal. That made ... moderately more sense. "I ... am mine," she said softly.

Leaf cocked her head. "Are you?"

She opened her mouth to say yes, but saying it, screaming it wouldn't make it less of a lie. "It wasn't even night," she said instead. "Mom always said to be home before dark, but they picked me up like a stone under the sun and took me and made me theirs. He marked me with his knife and left me to drip down my own face. I ... I ..." This wasn't right. She had gotten out! She was home! How was she still there?

Leaf was suddenly in front of her putting her arms around her, and Emily slumped forward. It wasn't right to have to lean on someone younger than she was, but Leaf was a cape and the same rules didn't apply. She slid down to her knees and her eyes welled with tears. "How do I ... how do I get rid of this?"

"Gettin' rid of it's easy. It's keepin' it that's hard. If you want, you don't hafta feel nothin' at all. Don't hafta feel scared or sad or nothin'." She fell silent and held her more tightly for a moment. "Tried it once. Wasn't worth it. It was as easy as dying, and near as fun. And even then with all the sadness gone, it wasn't never far. So instead I ate it. Tasted like pure misery and it took a while to get it all down, but after that it never got in my way."

Emily thought through the metaphor, trying to understand it. She pulled away and dried her eyes, suddenly feeling self conscious, but she stayed kneeling on the floor. I have to eat it. I have to steal myself and become mine. "I ... I'm sorry, I still don't get it."

Leaf nodded thoughtfully and sat down on the floor next to her. "No. You can't get it 'cause I can't give it. Wouldn't do no good, 'cause you don't need mine, you need yours. 'Sides, I've always done it alone." She sounded a little sad as she said that, and fell silent for a moment. "But you don't have to." She jumped to her feet and faced her. "Right. So here's the mark. You're gonna break into Bronze Palace of Life and Red Pudding and take what's yours. To get in you need a crew, and I know a couple o' people as are wanting the exact same heist as you."

WWW

A thieving crew. Anyone else would have called it hanging out with friends or even a support group, but it must have been a cape thing to stick so firmly with a motif. Or maybe Leaf thought it would be easier to pretend to star in a heist film than ... than ... yeah. Thieving crew worked, even if there wasn't any literal stealing involved.

And Emily did become friends with the other girls over the next few days. All they had in common was a shared nightmare that she'd rather have forgotten and every time she saw them she remembered sitting in that room waiting to be beaten, taken away, or worse, but ... but she couldn't forget. Trying just entrenched the memories deeper, and the only choice she had left was to move forward.

Somehow they helped her with that, and even more strangely she helped them do the same. A therapist expressing professional sympathy couldn't have done that, and her normal friends would have been even worse. Her school friends could laugh with her, but not cry with her. Stephanie, Natalie, and Angela ... when she was with them, she didn't even need to explain how she was feeling because they felt the same way.

Soon though, her mother decided that if Emily was well enough to visit friends, she was well enough to go back to school. Natalie had laughed when she had told them. "Brockton Bay's Bowser just Princess Peached you, and you don't even get a week off?" she had said. "That's insane!"

No. What was insane was how easily the four of them could joke about what had happened. That was as much as a miracle to Emily as being able to see out of both eyes.

None of the other girls went to Winslow, though, while most of the teenage Azn Bad Boy members who hadn't dropped out did. She tried not to think that any of them had been involved in her capture. But she'd be fine no matter what because ... because ...

I ain't forgot.

She smiled to herself and repeated the mental mantra in Leaf's street-rough dialect. I ain't forgot. I am mine.

The second part was a lie, but also not a lie. A hope? A promise? An ideal?

She got through her first period English class on the lie that she had been at home sick for the past few days. Admitting that she had been a nervous wreck would mark her as a victim by people who would've been broken by far less, and wowing her peers with the story of how she had met a cape seemed cheap.

She got to her second period biology class early to ask the teacher what she had missed the days before, but Mr. Martins wasn't even there. In fact, the only other person in the room was Locker Girl, but she was always the first person there. She carried her whole life in her backpack and scurried through the hall like the world was out to get her. Emily took her seat, pulled out her phone, and actively ignored her like she always did.

But the more Emily tried to forget something, the harder it became. The Locker Girl wasn't an unpleasant memory because of anything she had done to Emily, but because of what Emily had done to her. Nothing major, of course, not compared to what had happened back in January, but nothing to be proud of, either. High school was ... cut throat, and Emily had been insecure, eager to make a good impression.

Others in the school weren't. Some of them walked with so much confidence, spoke with so much assurance that they seemed to own the school and everyone in it. And when people like that asked her to join in a game, who was she to refuse? Even if the game was sending hate mail to a near stranger, or swiping her pencil when she wasn't looking, or sticking a foot out to trip her as she walked past.

It had been mean, sure, but as long as everyone could laugh about it, it wasn't all that bad, right? Wrong, yes, but not cruel.

Some lies were easier to tell than others, though, and some jokes stopped being funny after you stopped to think. Or after the ambulance showed up.

Emily wasn't sure why she had gone along with it. Peer pressure? That was such a cliche, and one usually involving drugs. Emily had wanted to fit in with the other girls, and they had wanted her to join in their ... games? Competition? What even was it all about?

"You're not afraid, are you?" That had been the line they always used when someone wanted to back down from a challenge, and it was such a stupid line when one stopped to think about it. Most of the pranks were either anonymous or minor enough that she'd get a warning if caught, and Taylor Herbert wasn't the sort of person who sent people running. But some of the more popular girls had wanted her to do it to ... prove herself.

And what did you prove? a part of her asked. You proved that you were willing to hurt a stranger on demand. On their demand.

Then an even deeper, crueler part of her asked, Why did he need to cut out your eye?

Her breath caught in her throat. I am mine. What a joke. She had spent so long trying to belong that she hadn't worried about who she belonged to until now.

Then she finally understood what she needed to do.

She stood up, sat down next to the girl she had watched get abused since the beginning of the school year, and stole herself.

"Hey," she said brightly. "How're you doing?"

Taylor put a protective arm between Emily and her books and glanced over at her. She wasn't the sort of person Emily made eye contact with when she could avoid it. Most of the time, it was easier if she didn't think of the girl as all that human. But now, Taylor didn't seem as timid as Emily had expected. She acted timid, but there was too much anger in her brown, bespectacled eyes.

"Fine."

Isn't everybody? "So I kind of missed the last few days. Did the teacher say anything important?"

"Just what's on the syllabus."

"Any chance I could borrow your notes? I'd really appreciate ... it?

It was an innocent enough request, but Taylor looked at her like Emily had just insulted her mother. "You know what? Screw you. I mean it." She picked up her books and took a seat at the other side of the room.

What did I say? she thought. No wonder you don't have any friends! I was just trying to be nice!

A deeper part of her said, No. I was trying to apologize without apologizing. Why should she have accepted that?

She had joined in the pranks not because she had wanted to, but because she had been afraid not to. She was still afraid not to.

And that was reason enough to put an end to it.

"Look, I ... I'm sorry. I've been a jerk to you for a while now, and I'm better than that. Or ... at least I'd like to be."

Taylor held her gaze for a long while, and Emily liked to think that it ... softened. A bit. "Well, you weren't the worst of them. Where's this coming from all of a sudden?"

I was crying in the dark, weeping blood from an empty eye socket, and I asked, "What did I ever do to deserve this?" And then, half blind, I saw things more clearly than I ever wanted to. "It's ... a long story. Have you heard of a cape named Leaf?"

Taylor shook her head. "I haven't."

A group of students came into the classroom, and it looked like the bell was about to ring. Mr. Martins still hadn't gotten back, so either he was out for a smoking break, a drinking break, or had suffered a midlife crisis and had quit his job. "I'll tell you later," she said, trying to think up a watered down version of events that would work. There was too much that was too personal, and much of the rest wasn't her story to tell.

"By the way," she added as the classroom filled up. "Is that still a no on the notes thing, or ..."

Taylor blinked. "Oh. Sure." She opened her notebook and slid it to her. It was stained purple and the pages were wrinkled, but the writing was still legible. In places. It looked like it had been drenched with grape juice as part of a recent prank.

"You know, I once tried to do this to a tee shirt over the summer," she said lightly, trying to make out what words she could, "and it didn't turn out nearly this good."

Taylor made a sound that might have been part of a laugh. "Yeah, that's what happened," she said dryly. "I tie-dyed my own notebook. Glad you like it."

Class started after the teacher finally showed up, though Emily noticed more than a few looks of confusion, contempt, and outright hostility from some of the other students. That surprised her, but it didn't bother her as much as it would have a week before. Because honestly, after all she had been through, what could a couple of high school kids even do to her?

WWW

A/n Alright. Sorry about the technical issues with the false update. Thanks for your patience, guys, I mean it. Also I would like to thank my editor Exiled Immortal for his help in this chapter. I honestly wouldn't have written it at all and skipped straight to the bank heist if he hadn't suggested that I focus a bit more on the quieter moments of the story.

Also, thank you to my two patrons, Pv2 and Exiled Immortal for supporting my writing habit with sweet, sweet cash.

Finally, I'd like to thank my readers and everyone who has taken the time to leave a review on this story to let me know what you thought. And with that, I'll see you next chapter.


	7. Chapter 7

Leaf

Chapter Seven

In the following days Lift learned to kick people in the face, and her quality of life improved dramatically.

"Again," Brian said. He blocked with his arm, but if he hadn't, he would have gotten a face full of foot from the right, then the left, then from below as Lift spun around, planted her hands on the ground, and ... actually, that one just hit his chest. _But_ if he was shorter ...

"Good. Do it again until it's muscle memory." Brian was big on muscle memory. He said things like, "Good, do it again," by muscle memory.

But Lift smiled all the same. "Hey, how come Lisa never spars?" she said as the older girl came into the room. Lisa was a bit shorter than Brian, so her face would be easier to reach.

"Who, me?" Lisa said, pocketing her phone. "No thanks. I'm more of a brains over brawn villain. Besides, I need to save my breath for talking."

"Also, she's lazy," Alec said.

Lisa shot him a look. "Weaponized talking is hard work. What's your excuse?"

"I never claimed _I_ wasn't. You don't see me on that mat when I can avoid it."

Lisa shook her head. "Anyway, I just got off the phone with the boss. Who wants to rob a bank?"

"Gee, I would, but I'm too lazy," Alec said. "I think I'll just stay here and play video games."

"Bad idea," Brian said. "Bank robberies are a villain cliche, but there are plenty of places that give as good of a pay out for half the risk."

"Wait," Lift said. "We have a _boss_?"

WWW

"It's still a bad idea," Brian said after Rachel had gotten back. "We'd have to break into a fortified area, giving the heroes time to show up, and then deal with at least one of the three hero teams in the city. Best case scenario, we make a few thousand dollars a piece. Worst case, we go to jail. We'd be better off hitting the ABB targets we had planned."

Lisa nodded. "So you're worried that the risk is too high and the payout is too high. Important points. I talked it over with the boss, and I think we can deal with both."

"_What_ boss?" Lift asked. "How long have we had a boss? Is this new? How come no one told me about this?"

Lisa sighed. "You know we have a boss. We've told you about him repeatedly."

WWW

_Lift bounced up and down on her new bed, testing how high she could go._

"_So, here's your room," Lisa said in the background. "Make yourself at home. You get two grand a month just for being on the team, and I was able to convince the boss to pay you in advance. If you want to go shopping later to get some new clothes—not that you're not rocking the homeless look—just let me know. Also there's a Ghirardelli's down on the Boardwalk doing a special on mango cream filling, you know, if you want to support your local businesses ... and blood sugar."_

"_What about the boss?" Skullface asked. "Can he help?"_

_Knowitall shook her head. "I just got off the phone with him. He told us to keep him posted on any updates, and that he has absolute confidence in our abilities."_

_Fancypants laughed. "In other words, screw you, you're on your own."_

"_Alright, the boss gave me a list of ABB points of interest. We just need to pick, say, six of them, and Operation Steal Lung's Dinner will be good to go."_

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"So, he's a secret boss?" Lift said.

"No, he's ... fine," Lisa said. "Fine. We have a boss, he gives us money, advice, info, jobs, blah blah blah. Moving on. First of all, Brian, you were worried about the risk, and we need to worry about the Protectorate, Wards, and New Wave. The Protectorate will be out of town on Thursday doing an event, so they're out of the picture."

"What sort of event?" Lift asked.

"I ... didn't check. Probably a fundraiser or a PR event or something. The point is, they'll be too far away to do anything."

"Will there be food there?"

Lisa shrugged. "Probably."

"Then why ain't we robbin' that?"

Lisa gave her a flat look. "The place with the most powerful capes in the city and with little to no on hand cash?" she asked. "That is an excellent question. We will get back to that. Anyway, the heroes have their own jurisdictional protocols, and if hit a bank solidly in Wards territory, New Wave will stay out of it. _And_ if we strike when the Wards are in school, then they'll have to miss class to come fight us. If the same six kids cut class every time there's a dastardly villain to deal with, their classmates are going to get suspicious. We'll be dealing with half the team at most, and I'm pretty sure the five of us can handle any three of them.

"As for the turn out, the boss offered us a deal. Three times whatever we steal or twenty-five grand, whichever is greater, _and_ costs. Equipment, info, bribes, anything we might need. Money's always coming and going, but the bank is set to receive a major shipment at eleven Thursday morning and will send the next one out at three. If we strike at one, there should be at least thirty thousand dollars in there, which the boss will turn into ninety. Split five ways, that's eighteen grand _each_."

"How much is that?" Lift asked.

Lisa hesitated. "If you go to that Cinabon over on Boardwalk, eighteen thousand will get you over two thousand cinnamon rolls."

Lift's eyes widened. "How much is _that_?"

"Enough to eat six a day every day for the next year."

Lift considered that. Their rolls were a pretty good size, and six could go a long ways to filling her up. Besides, when they were fresh and steaming hot, glaze melting off the top ...

"Why?" Brian asked. "Why would he pay us sixty thousand dollars to rob a bank? I mean, I get him fencing what we steal and laundering our money. If he has the right connections, he gets as much out of that as we do. But this? I know when something's too good to be true, and this deal crossed the line thirty thousand dollars ago."

Lisa smiled. "Not as much as you might think. Those kinds of amounts don't mean a whole lot to him, and he's been investing in us for months now. We've proven that we can get in and out well enough, and that's worth ten grand a month to him, but we took down _Lung_. The Empire couldn't do that. The Protectorate couldn't do that. _We_ did. That makes us big league material, and he's offering us a big league pay off."

"But why pay us anything?" Lift asked. She had no interest in money, but she knew how it worked (mostly), and no one would pay her a year's supply of cinnamon rolls without getting something in return.

"Well, that is a good question with a long and complicated answer," Lisa said. "Whenever you come across a villain sponsor, he's in it for one of three reasons. The first one is money. Like Brian said, he fences goods and launders money for us, but that's just the beginning. He could short-sell stocks in a company, pay us fifty grand to trash the place, and end up with a hundred thousand. And if we get big, we could end up with our own black market merchandising line, and that's when the money really starts to roll in. There's a fine line between villainy and showbiz, and villain sponsors use that line as a jump rope.

"The next reason is power. It pays to have friends in low places, and not just in cash. If you want to intimidate your enemies at competitive prices, you can't beat a team like ours when it comes to style and panache."

Lift understood all of that except for the panache. That was probably what you called pancakes before they were cooked.

"Then there's politics," Lisa said. "And that's where it gets complicated, so I won't go into that."

"I understand pol'tics." Even before she had started living in a palace pol'tics had been straightforward for her. They were just a buncha cons but extra squiggly 'cause they had to be legal.

"Oh. Okay then. A politics sponsor works a lot like the first two kinds, only with extra steps and less intuitive goals. He could try to discredit the current political regime by putting together extra villain teams, or he could set us up to rebalance the villain dynamic to do the opposite. I could talk your ear off about this, but that's for another time."

Lift nodded. "So which one is it?"

"Hm?"

"What's he havin' for dinner?"

Lisa shrugged. "Can't say. Whenever I get the urge to look into it, I remember the stupid amounts of money he's been throwing at us and think about the old adages about gift horses and curious cats, and I lose interest. But back to the bank robbery, we're looking at a ninety-thousand dollar payday with a risk factor of a couple of Wards. Who's in?"

Brian leaned back and looked at the ceiling. "What the heck. Sure."

"Alec?" Lisa asked.

He shrugged. "Sounds like the hardest part is carrying all the money away. I'm in."

"Rachel?"

"Yes."

"Lift?"

She thought for a moment and glanced down at Wyndle. "Yeah, okay." There was probably a vending machine or an employee lounge she could rob while everyone else was busy with the money. "How are we doing this?"

Lift had never put much planning into her heists in the past. There were too many things that you _couldn't_ plan for, so she usually skipped that part and made things up as she went along. Besides, as a master thief, she had never needed a plan.

But while Rachel was giving her dogs tummy rubs and Alec was getting lunch ready (two very important jobs), Lisa and Brian wanted to plan _everything_. Lisa had a fabrial full of pictures of the bank inside and out, diagrams, and enough words to make a head explode. While they were discussing using Lift's shardblade to break into the vault, she made a suggestion.

"Why don't we just dig a tunnel?" she asked. "If we know where the vault is, we could just skip the main entrances and everything." The vending machines included, but it still made more sense than kicking down the front door.

"That could work," Brian said. "It would take longer, but we can start digging it today if we needed to. Best case scenario, we get out before the heroes even show up. Worst case, we have a several ton steel door between us and them and an easy exit."

"It could backfire though," Lisa said. "In a tight enclosed space like that? If it came down to a fight, we wouldn't be able to fit the five of us _and_ Rachel's transformed dogs inside the vault. And if we outnumber the heroes, which between the five of us and her three dogs we definitely will, the small space will hurt us a lot more than it will help us. If Clockblocker gets through the vault door he could tag half of us just by stumbling around blindly. And Vista? Vista could shrink the tunnel down to a pinprick and trap us there all day."

Brian frowned. "Alright. How about this? We dig the tunnel except for the last bit. Then we come in through the fire exit as normal. The heroes show up and, I don't know, set up a perimeter or whatever, and then instead of engaging them we uncover the tunnel entrance and just leave."

Lisa nodded thoughtfully. "The best defense is being somewhere else entirely. We'll need a map of the sewers and the bank's blueprints so we don't destabilize the building going in. A lot of that isn't going to be in the public domain, but I'm pretty sure the boss can hook us up." She pulled out her phone and started pressing buttons. "Hey, Boss, how's it going?" she said with a forced smile. "So I told the team about your deal, and everyone is just super excited for Thursday. Yeah. They can't wait. First though, we're going to borrow your frankly ungodly information network to get the bank's blueprints."

There was a pause.

"Oh, nothing much. We're thinking of digging a tunnel in there to save some trouble later on, and don't want to knock the building over. Can you imagine that? That's the sort of thing people would hold a grudge for."

Another pause.

"What? Oh. Really? Huh. Good to know. Uh-huh. How about just as an exit strat? Okay. I'll pass that along." She put her phone down.

"Is there a problem?" Brian asked.

"Not really. He said that the triple payoff is dependent on us engaging with the heroes. He wants us to get our names out, and that means winning fights, not avoiding them. If we dig our way into the vault and get out before anyone realizes that we're there, we'll get away with the bank's thirty-thousand, but not the boss' sixty-thousand."

Lift frowned. "So he wants us to kick the door down, beat up everyone, and take their stuff, but we can't sneak in and out without hurtin' nobody." He wanted them to rob the place, just as long as they were really stupid and clumsy about it. "No, I got it. He wants us to spit in their eye, don't he? 'Cause pol'tics."

Lisa shrugged. "Could be." _Could be. Can't say. It's possible._ For someone who knew everything, she was being real vague today.

"You said the big heroes were havin' a party, right?" Lift said as an idea grew in her mind. "Where?"

"Could be good to know," Brian said. "If Velocity or Dauntless can reinforce the Wards, I want to know that beforehand."

Lisa gave him a look. "I mean, if it takes us more than twenty minutes to rob a bank, we've screwed up, but I'll check." She took out her phone again. "Hey, Boss. Sorry to bother you again, but the engagement the Protectorate is going to be busy with? Could you tell us where it is?"

A pause.

"The Augustus Country Club? Got it. And I'm sure you're already planning on doing this, but could you have an informant there to let us know if any of the heroes don't show up and when they leave?"

"Hey, Lisa," Lift hissed. "Ask him how much he'll pay us for robbing that!"

She glared at her and shook her head. "Okay, thanks. I think that's—"

"Come on! You know that'll be more fun than some boring old bank."

She mouthed the word _no_. "That's all. I'll let you know if—hey!"

Lift snatched the phone from her hand and held it up to her ear like she had seen everyone else do. "Hey, boss man!"

"Give that back!" Lisa shouted, reaching for her.

Lift rolled backward off the couch and jumped away. "_Who is this?"_ said a voice from the phone. She smiled. _And I thought these things were going to be hard to use._

"I'm Leaf. I stole Lung's dinner and his feet last week. You've heard of me. I gotta know somethin'. If you're willing to pay us a year of cin'min rolls to rob a bank, how much will you give us if we rob that gusty country club? The heroes'll get eye spit either way, but my way's got extra gunk."

There was a pause as Lisa scrambled to catch up with her. "_This conversation is over. Do not speak to me again."_ The phone made a click just before Lisa took it back.

"_Don't_ do that," she said, her face livid. "_Ever_. Only I talk to the boss, okay? It's a delicate process where I annoy him _just _enough so he'll give me what I want to get rid of me that much sooner _without_ making him angry enough to screw us over. You do _not_ bludgeon your way through a conversation with him!"

Lift shrugged. "It's okay. I'm new, so he'll 'spect me to be stupid, and I'm young, so he'll 'spect me to be even stupider. I gotta use that up while I can." She grinned. "Besides, I got what I wanted."

Lisa narrowed her eyes. "Oh?"

"Yup. It's like with Lung last week, tryin' to distract him so much so he can't kill us. The boss don't want us to spit in no one's eye, just keep 'em busy. Sneakin' in and outta the bank won't busy nobody, and robbin' the gusty club won't help him 'cause they're already distracted. I'll bet you anything that he's planning a second heist at the same time as us, and whatever he's havin' for dinner, it's worth more than a year's supply of cin'min rolls."

She grinned, but Lisa didn't. "Do you think that I couldn't figure that out on my own if I wanted to?"

Lift hesitated. "Did you?"

"_Hell_ no. I need to be careful to be smart enough to be useful _without_ being too smart for my own good. Which is the opposite of what you're doing."

Lift looked up at her and a thought dawned on her. "You're scared of him."

She took a breath. "I'm not. It's just that ... you don't recognize danger until it's right in front of you, and that's not enough."

WWW

Lift spent the next few nights digging a hole.

"So, I know that this is mostly water," Lisa said. "Rain water is the top component, and there's also a lot of bath water and dishwater. Hardly any of this has ever seen the inside of a toilet. But goddammit, when this is over I am burning these clothes."

"There's nothing wrong with having some work clothes," Brian said. "We're villains. We get our hands dirty. Sewage washes off."

"Smells like crap, though."

Lisa was there because she knew how maps worked. Brian was there for cover, putting up walls of darkness on either side of them. Not a lot of people came through here, but it would only take one to catch them. Alec stayed home 'cause he was lazy, and Rachel didn't come neither 'cause dogs couldn't climb ladders.

Lift didn't mind the smell too much. It was more like muck than poop, and you got used to it. Lisa still made her take a bath _every single day_ afterwards, which was crazy. Only crazy people, rich people, and crazy-rich people did that, but here she was, squeaky clean day after day and ready to get dirty again.

"How's that?"

Lisa shone a beam of light from her phone on Lift's work and tapped on the end of the tunnel. It sloped upward until it was nearly vertical. "Alright, good. Make it wide enough so Rachel's dogs could crawl through single file, but don't go any further up than this. The dogs need to be able to dig through the top layer of cement, but we don't want the floor to collapse on itself before then."

Lift got back to work, carving off the edges of the tunnel until she could no longer touch both ends at once. Wyndle could be as long as she needed him to be so that wasn't an issue, but she still got a load of dust in her eyes.

"So I've been thinking," Lift said as she worked. "You got this whole bank robbery planned out down to the last detail, right? And it's not gonna be dangerous or nothin'. You'll be fast instead of quiet, and you're stronger than the other folks who're gonna try and stop you, so you needn't worry 'bout that none. I'm thinkin' I might sit this one out."

"You're not scared, are you?" Brian asked. He picked up a chunk of concrete and tossed it down the main tunnel. It splashed too close to Lisa, who glared at him.

She laughed. "Storms, no. If it were scary it'd be _fun_. Now it's just _boring_." She jumped back as another chunk came loose. "Tryin' not to get caught is fun, but you're _plannin'_ to get caught and just fight your way through anyway, and I ain't no fighter."

"Don't sell yourself short," he said. "You beat Lung."

"I ain't sellin' myself short, I'm sellin' myself tall. Any punter with a sword can chop people up, but I'm a thief. Sneakin' in is thievin'. Fightin' your way out is just thuggery."

"What? Let me get this straight. You want to drop out of the mission because you're _bored_? Lift, we've already spent more time digging this tunnel than the entire robbery is going to take."

She shrugged. "Yeah, but this is fun."

"This," he said, giving her a flat look. "Spending hours in a dank sewer digging a hole is fun for you."

She grinned at him. "A _secret_ hole. No one knows it's here but us."

He sighed. "Look, not every job is going to be fun and exciting. Most of what we do is work. We try to maximize the profit and minimize the risk, and then we can have fun after it's over. After we rob the bank, you could have the rest of the month to yourself, but right now there's work to do."

Her shoulders slumped. "That just sounds starvin' miserable. And we're not even stealin' nothin' I want. Just a big heap of money." And it was all 'cause some mysterious boss was telling them to. There wasn't much point in robbing a bank if someone _wanted_ you to do it. If she was going to do what she was told, she might as well be a hero.

He frowned. "Money is what this is all about. Money can mean the difference between life and death if you know how to spend it. At the rate things are going, I might be able to retire by twenty-five with enough saved up to put Aisha through college." He paused. "And that's something I struggle to imagine. But I don't pull these jobs because they're fun. I do it to prepare for the future."

She dismissed her Shardblade, turning Wyndle back into a mass of vines that only she could see, and sat down on a chunk of concrete. "That's gotta be the worst thing you can do to a future, to _prepare_ it. Might as well not even have one then."

He sighed. "You can't just slide through life and never ..." He shook his head and turned to Lisa. "If Lift stays home, what kind of trouble would that leave us with?"

Lisa considered that. "The vault doors would take a little bit longer, but not by a whole lot. And if we have hostages, we can take as much time as we want as long as we're done by the time the Protectorate gets back. If we were going up against the Protectorate heroes I'd definitely want you there; they'd rather take a loss than be seen beating up kids, though the Wards have more leeway. You'll want to avoid chopping up heroes if you can avoid it because we don't want the heat.

"In a worst case scenario, Clockblocker, Aegis, and Vista try to stop us. Clockblocker could counter your friction power completely, and Aegis and Vista could mostly ignore you. You could disable Gallant's and Kid Win's Tinkertech if you could get close enough, but they're not the most dangerous players. Honestly the main reason I'd want you there is for emergency heals, and against those guys? Even Shadow Stalker keeps her psychopathic tendencies in check when her team is watching her, so if you want to ditch the job ..." She shrugged.

"Alright," Brian said. "I can't force you to come, and who knows? It might be better to have an ace in the hole for when we really need you. Just ... just stay out of trouble while we're gone, okay?"

"I'll be fine," she said, as she began at the tunnel walls again. She had already found a place full of food that _nobody_ wanted her to rob, and it had been no trouble at all.

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"Hey, Taxi-Man," Lift said, climbing into the car. It smelled like fresh leather. "Take me to the ..." She paused to get the pronunciation right. "... Ah-gus-tus Country Club, and make it fast."

The driver, a chubby man with tan skin and a spectacular mustache, peered at her through a mirror then turned around to look at her straight. She'd seen that sorta look before. It was a look that wondered what she was doing here, wished that she were doing it somewhere else, and hoped that while she was here, she didn't get his nice clean seat dirty. Which was totally unfair. She had bathed three times in that week alone!

"The Augustus Country Club? Really, kid?"

She nodded. "And make it fast."

"Okay, I'm going to need to see some money up front for this one."

She handed him a brown paper bag. He took it and peered inside.

"There had better not be drugs in—_sweet Mother of Mercy!_ There has got to be over a thousand dollars in here! How'd a kid like you make this kind of dough?"

"I didn't steal it, if that's what you're askin'." That was her team allowance, one of the few things she _hadn't_ stolen. Money just got people into trouble, so she wanted to get rid of it as soon as she could. Besides, Lisa had said something about supporting local businesses, right?

"I never said you did, I ... you know what? Nevermind. I don't want to know, I do _not_ want to know. Augustus Country Club? You got it."

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"This is ridiculous!" Lift walked along the outer fence, looking in. "Why build a palace in the middle of nowhere? Why fence off all the nowhere in the first place? Who has time to cut an endless field of grass to be precisely one inch tall?"

"Extravagance is an expression of wealth," Wyndle said, growing along the fence. "This is an extravagance of space. Inconvenient to be sure, but hardly unique. Though I must say, this place is very green."

Lift rolled her eyes. "Yup. They grew grass in the field like it's a big starvin' garden."

"There are trees too."

"Oh, right. Can't forget the threes. Nothin' like a few trees to break up the monotonomy of grass." They didn't even have different kinds of grass. Every single blade was the exact same color and width, for as far as the eye could see.

"It's pronounced monotony, and I think it's rather pleasant. Even if you disagree with the end result, you have to respect the care that has been put into it."

"Don't gotta respect nothin'."

Wyndle sighed. "No, Mistress, I have come to understand that you do not. Though if you were to cultivate a garden of your own, I believe you would come to admire the craft a bit more. You might even learn something."

"Learnin's for noodles." Lift took a running start and jumped the fence. The metal bars were slick with rain water and there were spikes on top, but the spikes were trying to look pretty first, politely ask people not to break in second if it weren't too much trouble, and third to provide convenient hand holds to anyone trying to break in anyway.

Once on the inside of the fence, the next step was to walk to the big building in the middle. A mile away.

"Ugh. I hope everyone else is having more fun at the bank than I am."

"And I hope they don't hurt anyone while they're there."

Lift rolled her eyes as she trudged along the wet grass. "Course they ain't gonna hurt nobody. They're as harmless as me."

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"Armsmaster! It's so good to see you."

LIE_._

The letters flashed at the top of Armsmaster's HUD. The lie detector was one of his newer updates, and it needed a few tweaks, like determining the difference between when a villain was bluffing and when a wealthy business man was making polite smalltalk.

He forced a smile, a skill that he had honed from hours of practice, aided by the fact that his helmet covered his eyes. He gave the man a firm handshake (another honed skill, made all the riskier by his power armor) as his facial recognition software identified him.

Charles Andrew Shermin, a venture capitalist with a stake in over a dozen startups in Brockton Bay alone. Several of those businesses had gang ties, but not enough to be suspicious. Only the PRT and associated organizations were completely free from villainous influences, and even that was debatable.

"Mr. Shermin, I'm glad you could make it."

LIE.

_No one asked you._

"I trust you are enjoying yourself," he continued.

Shermin grinned. "As stoic as ever, eh? Good to know."

_Stoic? That was meant to come off as relaxed and friendly._ In all honesty, he could design a program to predict social encounters and analyze the optimal response, assuming he had the time. And that was what it all came down to, time. If he spent half the time he spent schmoozing as he did working in his workshop or in the field, he'd have cleaned up the city years ago. Instead, he wasted his few waking hours ensuring bankers, bureaucrats, politicians, and concerned parents that the city was safe instead of grabbing his halberd, revving up his motorcycle, and making it so. And in this setting, the only thing his skills, training, and hand-made equipment allotted him was his lie detector declaring Shermin's most recent statement as TRUTH.

If he had been paying attention to what the man had said, that might have meant something.

"So I was chatting with my friend Max over there—"

Armsmaster glanced over to where Maximus Otto Anders—CEO of Medhall with a number of controlling interests up and down the supply chain verging on a vertical monopoly—stood chatting with Roy Leo Christner—Mayor of Brockton Bay on his third term and father of Roy Christner, also known as Triumph.

"—and I heard that you were the one to take in Lung on a solo operation. Is that true?"

"Yes."

LIE.

He really needed to look at the code. His statement was _technically_ true, which was close enough. While on patrol, the PRT received intel concerning a cape fight in the docks. On the scene Armsmaster found Lung coming down from his transformation and looking like he had been savaged by a wild animal. Armsmaster's initial hypothesis had been Hookwolf, but later examinations suggested that the teenaged villain Hellhound had been involved.

What had been more concerning was the paralysis Lung had suffered. While his skin, bone, and muscle tissue had been unaffected, his nerves had been dissolved and his blood vessels had been drained and cauterized below the knees. His feet, caught in mid-transformation and unable to resume their normal shape, had needed to be amputated when they began to rot.

The fact that this had happened to Lung was a nonissue. Paraplegic super villains made life easier for everyone involved. But the fact that there was another cape in his city that could do _that_ to someone with Lung's defensive and regenerative abilities was a matter for concern. He prided himself on being prepared for anything he might face in the field, but he had no idea if this was a Striker ability, an energy blast, Tinkertech, or none of the above. Lung himself had told them nothing, and Armsmaster could only assume that the cape in question was in some way allied with the Undersiders.

Lung's capture had been too easy by far. He had been practically gift-wrapped for Armsmaster. Or left as a warning.

He caught a glimpse of something through the skylight. Someone on the roof? Were Assault and Battery shirking their responsibilities while stealing some time alone? Was Dauntless flying around outside ... in the rain, instead of doing his job? Hoping it was the latter he rewound the recording on his visor while the conversation continued.

"That's wonderful news! You must tell me how it happened."

LIE.

Armsmaster hesitated, not sure which of his two statements had triggered the lie detector. If the first statement was the lie, then either Sherwin desired to see Lung succeed or Armsmaster fail. If it was the second, well, as leader of the Protectorate ENE his list of duties were long and vast, but they did not include entertaining this particular buffoon.

"I was out on a late night patrol when I received a call concerning a cape fight in the area. Lung had entered into an altercation with another group of capes, and while he seemed to have driven them off, he had left his own henchmen behind. Without backup, I was able to engage him one on one. I had faced him enough times in the past that his old tricks no longer worked on me, and I was able to apprehend him without undue difficulty."

He ignored the lie detector on his HUD as he played back a few seconds of recorded visuals. One of his older modules used a non-invasive BCI that interpreted his brainwaves as commands, but the software worked poorly when Armsmaster was multitasking. His current system, which read his eye movements and blinks, worked as his mind wandered.

He had stopped paying attention to the man in front of him, noting only that his most recent statement had been classified as a LIE, and focused on a freeze frame of a small girl passing by the skylight. She was wearing a mask and had shown only her profile, but his facial recognition software identified her as a known villain within a ninety-four point three seven percent.

"Excuse me, Mr. Shermin," he said with forced politeness. "There's a work issue to take care of."

"Oh. Well, nice talking to you."

LIE.

Leaf. A young criminal with a history of break-ins and no history of violence. Friction negation powers, limited phytokinesis, and an ability to project bladed weapons that required further study. Later. _Now_ she needed to be gone.

He scanned the room, searching for someone whose abilities would help him. "Velocity," he said, spotting the red-costumed hero sporting a wine glass. "How much have you had to drink?"

Velocity grimaced. "No conversation that starts out like that is good news." TRUTH. "Two? Three, tops." TRUTH. "What do you need?"

"The villain Leaf has been spotted on the premises."

"Leaf? _Leaf_?" His eyes widened though the lenses of his mask. "The kid who broke into the—"

"_Classified!_" That she had broken into the PHQ at all was shameful, the fact that it had taken the combined efforts of himself and three other heroes to subdue her was an embarrassment, and the end result of her breaking out of the PRTHQ within twenty-four hours was something that Armsmaster would happily take to his grave. The child was not dangerous, but she was _extremely_ slippery and the heroes had been forced to pull their punches.

Velocity glanced around, but no one seemed to be eavesdropping. "Are you sure?"

Armsmaster gave the man a flat look, even though Velocity could only see half of it. "I do not needlessly waste your time." LIE. _The hell is that supposed to mean?_ "Do not waste mine. She was last spotted outside on the roof. You are to locate her before she can make a scene."

The whole point of this party was to convince the wealthy elite that Brockton Bay was not, as one might initially assume, a raging dumpster fire, and that it was worth investing in. While the villain was unlikely to steal more than a hundred dollars in concrete goods, the damage that her presence could do to the reputation of the city, the heroes, and Armsmaster himself was unacceptable.

"And do what?" Velocity demanded. "Handcuffs don't work on her. Containment foam doesn't work on her—not that I have any. Apparently not even holding cells can—"

"_Classified!_" He glanced around and spoke softly. "Find her. Contact me. And most importantly, _be discreet_."

Velocity nodded hopelessly and headed out the door. He was next to useless in a fight, but his speed made him practically a clairvoyant when it came to reconnaissance. If Leaf was still outside, Velocity would find her. If she wasn't ... Armsmaster scanned the room, eyeing the crowd. He couldn't shake the feeling that every cocktail-formal corporate snob was waiting for him to fail and hoping that he would. It was an irrational notion, but one that he couldn't get rid of.

He spotted Miss Militia discussing something he couldn't hear with Eric Alexander Stansfield, chairman of Renaissance Capital. "Excuse me, Mr. Stansfield, I require a word with Miss Militia for a moment. Work matters."

"Of course," he said, smiling professionally. Armsmaster's facial recognition software was useful for remembering people's names. They often became offended when he forgot them, but disturbed when he remembered them. Stansfield took it for granted, either because of his position in his business or because his son was on the Wards team as Gallant.

"What happened?" Miss Militia said after they were alone.

"Code yellow. Leaf has been spotted in the area. Intentions unclear. I already sent out Velocity as a lookout. You have interacted with her the most, so I wanted you to know."

"Code yellow? She's a blue at most."

TRUTH.

Well, _she_ believed it. That didn't mean she was right.

"Normally yes, but here? At a public event? It's a disaster in the making. How did she even know we'd be here?"

Her brow furrowed thoughtfully. "I hadn't thought of that. This location isn't too different from her normal targets, but ..." But she had attempted to rob the PHO only a few weeks before. If the villain was going out of her way to provoke the heroes, she was doing a good job. "The thing you need to know about her is that she's not like any of the major villains in the city. She's not in it for money or power, just fun."

"The same could be said for the Slaughterhouse Nine."

Miss Militia raised an eyebrow. "That's a bit harsh, Armsmaster. And false. The Nine seek to strengthen their reputation wherever they go. Leaf doesn't. If she follows her usual pattern, she'll steal a few lobster rolls and a souffle and leave without a trace."

Armsmaster stared at her. "I'm not going to grant her free reign until she gets bored and leaves."

"The alternative is to try and arrest her in full view of some of the most influential men and women in the city. If you succeed, you'll seem cruel. Fail, and you'll look weak. Public opinion will show more mercy to the Wards if they take her in than if we do it."

While his lie detector marked her statement as TRUTH, he hated every word of it. When he saw a problem, he didn't ignore it, he _fixed_ it. He couldn't just sit back, relax, and wait for disaster. And it would be a disaster. It wouldn't be in Leaf's self interest to make a scene in front of the most important people in the city, but self interest hadn't been a pattern in her record. "Well, pass the word along to the others to keep an eye out, all the same. I'll check back with Velocity."

WWW

Lift slid across the floor, keeping her head below the counter tops. The people around her, the cooks, the chefs, the culinary masters, they didn't listen. They barely watched. To be fair, though, there was a lot in the kitchen to distract them.

Even if she closed her eyes she couldn't block it out. The sizzle of grease, the thick bubbling of the soup, and then there was the _smell_! And what a smell! So many smells, smells that she didn't have words for, smells of foods that she didn't have names for and that she had never tried before. The air was so thick with the smells she could almost taste it.

But not yet. And until then, she had a distraction of her own to worry about.

"You know, the more I think about it, the more I think gardening would be good for you," Wyndle said as she scurried into a cabinet, careful to avoid clanging any of the pots and pans. There was more room in the ovens, but ... but she didn't want to hide in one. "It is a hobby that rewards patience and consistency instead of impulsive, grandiose gestures. A plant that will flourish under a cup of water a day will shrivel and then drown if you give it a gallon a week."

Yeah. Wyndle for sure wasn't gettin' into the spirit of the heist. Probably 'cause he couldn't eat. Kind of sad, really. She listened as the sound of footsteps passed by and then got out again. If she hid in one place for too long she'd get caught no matter how good a place it was. She had to keep moving no matter what. Besides, she didn't come here to hide, she came here to _eat_.

"It's the same with people, if you think about it," he continued. "A consistent, nourishing environment is generally superior to one of constant panic. Not that being able to respond well to stress is a flaw, far from it, but one can only toy with death for so long before the game either becomes droll or fatal."

Just around the corner a cook transferred a tray full of rolls into an ornate glass bowl. Lift didn't know what kind they were, but they were so fresh she could _feel_ the oven warmth when she smelled them. But she couldn't snag one while the cook was staring at them.

"And I think you're starting to realize that, with others if not with yourself. It's a sign of maturity to—"

Lift turned him into a Shardrock and tossed him past the cook. He bounced off the dishwasher before he returned to his usual mass of vines. The cook turned toward the noise and away from Lift, and Lift snuck up behind her and snatched a roll.

"As always," Wyndle said with his usual lack of enthusiasm toward all things fun, "I am happy to be of assistance. But as I was saying ..."

Lift ducked under a table and sank her teeth into the roll. It was so hot it almost burnt her tongue, but it was _so _worth it. It was moist and buttery and-and-and ... there was some kind of meaty flavor to it, but not pork or chicken. It tasted like the ocean. Clam? Crab? Crabish, but more focused, and ... and there were no words for it. There weren't a whole lot of words for foods 'cause folks couldn't talk with their mouths full.

Then the door opened, and the whole kitchen went silent.

"Can ... can we help you?" one of the cooks asked. Lift couldn't see her, but she sounded old and plump like cooks were supposed to.

"Good day to you all. I hate to disturb you all while you're working, but there's a minor security inspection that I need to run." It was a woman's voice. She sounded familiar, but Lift couldn't remember where.

"What, right now?" another cook said. He had a deep voice and sounded like he had fat, wobbly cheeks. "With all due respect, some warning would be appreciated."

"I apologize sincerely, but as this is a surprise inspection, no warning was permitted. Remove everything from the stoves and ovens that you do not wish to burn, and exit the kitchen in an orderly fashion."

"You want us to _leave_?" the first cook said. "No. Perform your inspection if you want, but do it while we work. Otherwise the filet mignon will dry out, the tiramisu will turn to mush, and the creme brule will be ruined entirely." The kitchen fell silent once more. "If that's okay with you."

"I appreciate your dedication to excellence, but I must insist. I'll accept all responsibility for any delay or diminished quality in your cooking, but I will need five to ten minutes alone in your kitchen."

It was Miss Militia, Lift was almost sure of it. Surprise inspection? She didn't believe a word of it. Militia _knew_ she was here. But why was she getting rid of all the cooks? More eyes would help her find her.

The cooks grumbled as they put their things away, and one by one they walked out the door. Well, this was gonna be easy. Militia could only search one place at a time, and there were more than enough places to hide in the kitchen. Lift could leave as soon as Militia stopped looking at the door or just keep on moving until she searched the whole place and left.

"You can come out now, Leaf," she said. "There's more than enough food to go around, and I know you're hungry."

Lift winced. Was she bluffing, trying to trick her into showing herself by pretending like she already knew? Maybe. That's what Lift would have done in her place, but Militia didn't seem the type.

Besides, if Militia wasn't gonna play, Lift felt silly hiding. She crawled out from under the table and stood up. "What gave me away?"

"Your unique value system makes you unpredictable only to those who don't know it. You pursue fine food and thrills. Stealing food from the kitchens a room away from the entire protectorate would give you both."

_Even the chaotic can be predictable with proper study._

Darkness' words, but if Miss Militia had been wanting to catch her, she'd have turned Cain into a gun and pointed him at her. Instead, he sat all peaceful like on her belt. Lift reached for another roll, figuring that whatever Militia was planning, it would be better to deal with on a full stomach.

"Did you wash your hands?"

Lift stopped. "Huh?"

"No one will miss the food you take, but I don't want you to get anyone sick. Wash your hands first."

Lift stared with her mouth open as Miss Militia went to a sink, took off her gloves, and started lathering her own hands with soap and water. _Really,_ she thought. _You don't mind me stealin' nothin', just as long as my mits are sparklin' when I do it._

Mother had been like that too. They could have saved money on soap and bought something that mattered instead, but it had mattered to her. There wasn't always food on the table, but _storms_ was it clean.

Lift walked up next to her and held her hands under the water

Then Miss Militia, with her hand covered in white suds, did something that Lift never would have expected. She pulled her scarf down to her chin, held her hands in front of her face, and blew, long, slow, steady, and gentle. A bubble swelled up and broke free, nearly as big as her head and wobbling in the air. It popped, releasing its breath and turning into a drop of water and a cloud of mist.

Miss Militia smiled at her, just once as if to prove that she could, and pulled her scarf back up over her nose. As serious as she ever was, she said, "Are you taking care of yourself? I'd ask if you were staying out of trouble, but that doesn't seem to be a priority."

Lift stared at her for a moment before her mind caught up with her. "Yeah. Yeah I am. Staying with friends. One of 'em taught me how to kick people in the face."

Miss Militia raised her eyebrows. "Oh. A valuable skill when used correctly."

"Haven't gotten the chance to use it, though." She waited for Miss Militia to take the hint, but she didn't respond. Lift grabbed one of the rolls and took a bite out of it. "This was better when it was stolen." Food always did. It was best when it was stolen from an enemy, but none of her enemies seemed to last.

"In my experience food tastes best when it's earned."

Lift rolled her eyes. "'Course _you'd_ say that. Bet you never stole nothin' in your life."

Miss Militia tilted her head slightly. "You'd be right. I've never had the need or the desire to take what wasn't mine."

Lift looked up at her. "So you wouldn't _know_."

Her expression was unreadable for a moment. "No, I suppose not. Now, while I do enjoy talking to you, I'm going to have to let the cooks have their kitchen back. Contact me if you ever get into ... into more trouble than you can handle."

"Yeah, okay," she said, but she didn't mean it. It seemed like everyone around her wanted her to stay out of trouble but her.

"And, if I can give you some advice, Leaf?"

"Mm-hm?"

"I've had my powers for a long time, longer than you've been alive. If there's one thing that I've grown more and more certain of, it's that the gifts that have been given _to_ you are not _for_ you. That's true for parahuman abilities most of all. If you want to make the most of your powers, use them for others whenever you can."

Well, that was easy for her to say. Her powers were weapons, and if you used a weapon on yourself you were either using it wrong or starvin' miserable. But ... but Lift thought back to the four girls she had stolen from Lung. _Angela, Emily, Stephanie, Natalie._

"I do."

Her brow furrowed. "And?"

"And ..." They had nearly stolen themselves completely. Soon they wouldn't need her at all. "And food's always better when it's stolen."

Miss Militia seemed annoyed by this answer for some reason. She shook her head and turned away. "I'm sending the cooks in. You'd best make yourself scarce for when they return."

WWW

Lift left shortly after that. With her pockets full of pastries, rolls, bite-sized skewers, and one chicken leg, she headed over to the garage and hid inside the trunk of one of the cars. After the party was over, a couple of the heroes themselves drove her back. She never caught their names, but their car swerved a bit when she jumped out.

She pulled off her mask and stuffed it in her pocket as soon as she was out of sight, and walked the rest of the way back. It was still raining, though it seemed to rain all the time. As far as heists went, hers honestly hadn't gone that well. Half the point was the challenge of not getting caught, and the other half was the satisfaction from seeing her target find the food missing. Today she got caught practically before she got started, and to make the whole thing even more demeaning, Miss Militia didn't even seem to care none. No, from a professional perspective, the heist had plopped completely.

Other than that ... it hadn't been fun, but it _had _been interesting. People always said things like, "Let me know if you get into trouble," but she might just take Miss Militia up on her offer, if only to see if she meant it.

By the time she got to the loft, it had nearly stopped raining by the time she got there. Inside she found Rachel sitting on one couch with her face in her hands. Alec was lying in the other, staring at the ceiling.

Rachel looked up as soon as Lift came in. "What the hell are _you _doing here?" she demanded, even angrier than usual. One of her dogs, either Judas or Brutus, growled at her.

Lift stopped dead. "I _live _here. How'd the bank robbery go?" Not good, judging by the general mood.

"The bank robbery?" Alec laughed. It sounded like a crazy person's laugh, only without the enthusiasm. "It was a complete and total disaster. You should have been there, Lift. It was a level of, of such _catastrophic_ ruination, such baleful misfortune that you only see once in your life."

Lift winced. "Really? Oh. Brian and Lisa made it sound so easy I thought it was gonna be boring. What happened? And where are they, anyway?"

He laughed again. Rachel got up and punched a wall. "Like I said, you should have been there."

WWW

A/n And here's the next chapter. As usual, a big thanks to my s Exiled Immortal and Prime 2.0. Exiled Immortal is also my editor, who helped me out with this chapter a lot. In the first draft, Armsmaster was the one who encountered Lift in the kitchen, but as amusing as that was, we both decided that what this story needed more of was Miss Militia.


	8. Chapter 8

Leaf

Chapter Eight

"I don't need to tell you this," Aegis said down in the Wards HQ, "but today was a huge success, and I'm proud of each and every one of you."

Clockblocker leaned back in his chair and stretched. He flexed his arm a bit, trying to get used to it. It was amazing how much you learned to appreciate the little things in life after losing them, like having an arm connected to your shoulder by more than a single tendon.

"This is the first time we've had a direct confrontation with the Undersiders, and we've captured half of them. More than half if you count Hellhounds dogs."

Vista looked up. "Yeah, are those dogs going to be okay?"

"We'll find out. Some of the lab coats are preparing some tests to check for any weird long term effects to her powers. That may take a while, though. While we have a lot of doctors, there aren't a whole lot of vets that study parahuman abilities."

"I think they'll be fine," Gallant said. "Hellhound became furious when Aegis tackled one. I doubt she'd use her power on them if it was harmful."

"Is that how things usually go?" Browbeat asked. He had barely joined the team that week.

Aegis furrowed his brow. "I'm going to say no. Most fights aren't as direct as that, and usually we're backing up the Protectorate instead of doing everything ourselves. But we always need to be prepared for fights like these, and learn as much as we can from our mistakes afterwards."

"I should have noticed their escape route earlier," Vista said. "It's my fault Hellhound and Regent got away."

"You can't blame yourself for that," Gallant said. "If you weren't there, they would have walked all over us."

"I should remember to not use my inventions in the field," Kid Win said mechanically. "Even though that's the whole point."

"Only inventions that haven't been cleared for use," Aegis said. "Even if you know they're safe, the Director needs to know they're safe too."

"But that takes _forever_!"

"I learned that costume switches can be fun and exciting for everyone involved!" Clockblocker said. "Also, I may have soiled your pants." Though considering the blood and holes in the rest of Aegis' rust-red outfit, the pants were relatively pristine.

Aegis hung his head. "Yeah, that was a mistake on my part. I didn't take into consideration how much more fragile you are than I am."

"Hey! The only thing _fragile_ about me is my masculinity." He hesitated. "That came out wrong. What I mean is, I have feelings, and you hurt those feelings. Now apologize to my feelings."

Aegis sighed. "I'm sorry, Clockblocker's feelings. I'm just happy Panacea was there to patch you up."

He had gone out with her once. It had been a double date, him, Dean, Victoria, and Amy, and everything about the girl had said, "My sister dragged me here kicking and screaming and I want to go home." There hadn't been a second date, but Clockblocker learned today that she _really_ knew how to make a guy feel good. _Yeah, sure, sex is great, but have you ever had two working arms that aren't limp blood geysers?_

Well, yeah, plenty of people had two working arms, but not all of them _appreciated_ it.

"My feelings accept your apology," he said magnanimously.

He was going to have nightmares about those dogs. He wasn't sure if Hellhound went after him in Aegis' costume first because Aegis was the most dangerous or because he was the only one who could take the hits, but the team leader could handle a giant monster chewing on his head. Clockblocker couldn't. He froze the first one _after_ it chomped down on his arm, and after that no force on the planet could make it let go. And he had to stand there until his power wore off, praying that the dog would release him instead of bite down harder.

The plan worked, sure, but it could have worked _better._

"Though," he said. "If you want to make it up to me ..."

"Oh, god."

"Does Shadow Stalker know yet?" he said, clasping his hands together in a way that was totally not reminiscent of Mr. Burns.

"No," Aegis said. "She knows the Undersiders hit the bank, but she doesn't know the results."

Clockblocker smiled. "Can I tell her? Because considering her long and _passionate_ relationship with Grue, the look on her face when she finds out that we captured him without having to drag her out of school will brighten my day for a long, _long_ time."

WWW

"_That's_ what happened while I was gone?"

Alec plopped down on the couch. "Hey, don't blame yourself, shrimp. Blame Lisa. It was her idea in the first place, and she's the one who thought that there were only going to be three of them."

Lift tried that, but it didn't work. She should have been there! It didn't matter that she didn't think that they'd need her. She had ... she had been selfish. _Again_. Sure, Brian and Lisa weren't sick in bed waiting to die, but she had gone off to have fun while the people that she lived with, ate with, fought with, and stole with had gone off to do something dangerous.

She hadn't been there. What had she expected to happen? It was always like this. Things _always_ fell apart whenever she was gone.

"So we're gonna need to break them out," she said. She'd done jailbreaks before, more than she could count. Stealing food was fun, but jailbreaks were serious. Things wouldn't be okay if you failed a jailbreak. You couldn't give up on them or run from them or get caught, and they were twice as hard getting out as they were getting in. Worst, she had never done a jailbreak against no one who was awesome, and so far she hadn't even managed to steal an awesome person's dinner without getting caught.

But she should have been there, and she wasn't.

"Well, we might as well give it a shot," Alec said. "Yo, Rachel, you in?"

Rachel glared at Lift. "I'm in. Are _you _in?"

"I'm _in_." She held Rachel's gaze, though Rachel didn't relent. Relenting wasn't the sort of thing Rachel _did._

She nodded, though, after a while. "We're getting Judas and Brutus too." Out of her three dogs, only Angelica had gotten out safely. The heroes had stolen the other two.

"What, really?" Alec said.

Rachel turned on him. "You got a problem with that?"

"No, of course not. Problems are the last things I have. So, we're rescuing Brian, Lisa, and two dogs. What's the plan?"

Lift shook her head. "Plans are a waste of time. Brian and Lisa planned everything, and look where that got'em! I never plan nothin', and everything works out."

"So, what?" Alec said. "We'll break the door down, charge in, and take back what's ours?"

"Yes!" Rachel said.

"No!" Lift said. "We're thieves, not chull-brained thugs. We'll _sneak _in, steal what's theirs, and get out before they even know we're there."

"I have a better idea," Alec said. "We kidnap someone, either one of the heroes or one of the PRT agents. It doesn't matter as long as they can get in and out without too much trouble. Then I use my powers to turn them into a meat puppet, and ..."

WWW

Lisa's head lay on a pillow. The rest of her body was attached to it, but she couldn't feel it. She was breathing, but it was a quiet, shallow movement that she knew only by the noise it made.

She could feel her jaw, though. It was broken and throbbed in pain with every heartbeat. The doctors had wired her remaining teeth together to let her bones heal _after_ they picked out bits of the rest of her teeth out of the inside of her mouth. Lisa hadn't seen a mirror since the bank, but she could feel the way her lips were ripped and cut, and she suspected that she looked like she had tried to kiss a blender.

Panacea had used her powers on her. After Glory Girl had knocked her out, Panacea had made sure that the break in her spinal cord was low enough so she could breath, and she stopped the bleeding so Lisa wouldn't choke to death. Then she used her position as an honorary physician to inform the PRT doctors that Lisa was allergic to every pain killer on the market.

_Likely altered biology. Panacea too cautious to be caught in obvious lie. Strong impulse toward cruelty. Impulse not in line with ingrained black and white morality._

Lisa could forgive the broken jaw, and even the broken neck. It was a cape fight, and some capes played nicer than others. Besides, her mouth was her second greatest weapon, and the New Wave sisters knew it. But the lie about the pain killers? Making sure that her most vulnerable moments after her arrest were filled with weeks of unending agony? That was petty.

_Black and white morality. Hero equals justice equals retribution. Justifiable cruelty sole outlet for chronic self loathing. Dissatisfaction in results leads to further excesses of cruelty._

She had been bluffing in the bank when she threatened to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets. It was like threatening to shoot your only hostage. After you did it, you had nothing left. Besides, Panacea's secrets weren't nearly as devastating as the girl thought they were. Daughter of a supervillain? Whoop-dee-doo. In love with her sister? It would be embarrassing if Glory Girl found out, for about a week.

No, actually exposing the secrets was a dead end. It was all in the threat, and Lisa could squeeze quite a bit of blackmail out of that threat if she presented it right, and then blackmail Panacea further from the things she'd made her do in the first place.

_Increasing paranoia and dread, guilt from justifiable cruelties, fears retribution, expects retribution, requires retribution._

Lisa recognized the dark mental path she was going down, but it distracted her from thinking about what was going to happen to her. Villainy was a high stakes game, and the risk didn't alway pay off. Under normal circumstances, an arrest would lead to being forced into the Wards and endure a sentence of community service via heroism.

But now? With a broken neck? Would they even want her? The PRT wanted heroes that looked capable even more than they wanted heroes that _were_ capable, and a girl in a wheelchair who couldn't even go to the bathroom without help wasn't the sort of image they wanted.

The worst thing they could do—and government bureaucracies often leaned in that direction—was send her home. Her life as a villain was clearly over, and sending her to a parahuman detention center in her state would be cruel. So instead they'd inform her parents who would no doubt be teary-eyed with joy to have their prodigal daughter returned to them. Lisa wouldn't be able to say no with her wired jaw and perforated tongue, and by the time she could she'd be back in the house she grew up in, forever.

Just her and her parents. And this time she would truly be helpless. No one would be able to hear her but them. No one would be able to see her but them. No one would be able to control her, but _them_.

And not even that would be the end of it. Coil hadn't recruited her, he had _claimed_ her. He had offered all the Undersiders payment, but it was only with her that he complimented that offer with threats. The only choice she had in the matter was how much she would resist, and in her current state? Paralyzed from the neck down and entirely dependent on the people around her? She'd be practically delivered to him on a silver platter, the platter being dead parents and a kidnapping.

_Minimum autonomy, minimum resistance, minimum risk. Ideal for Coil. _

She'd be a talking head in a dark room working for a man who would push her to her limits one headache after another for the rest of her life.

That was the worst case scenario, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. There was nothing she could do to promote the best case scenario either, which made knowing it next to useless. Ideally Lift would find her and heal her. Even if Lisa wasn't rescued she would be able to feel something below the neck again, and even that would be an infinite improvement.

But at the moment she had no control at all, and when she was alone, helpless, and in pain, it was always the darkest places her mind chose to go.

_I could be bounded in a nutshell,_ she thought, _and count myself a queen of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams._

WWW

A vine named Wyndle grew out of the PRT building, across the alley, and up the wall. He was fast and invisible to anyone who wasn't Lift, so it made perfect sense for her to sit here on a nearby rooftop and wait for him to scout ahead. That didn't mean she liked it, though. Waiting. Doing nothing. It was the worst thing ever. That's why they made you do it in prison.

"What took you so long?" she said.

The tangle of vines that made up Wyndle's face looked both worried and indignant. "I was being _thorough_, Mistress. While Brian is in a holding cell near the one you stayed in recently, Lisa and the animals were more difficult to find. You may remember that the holding cells are heavily guarded and underground. The animals are not guarded, but they are in the center of the building. Lisa is neither. She is being held in a room on the third floor with a window, and seems to be the easiest one to extract."

Lift grinned. "I finally got you thinking like a thief."

"I-I am doing no such thing!"

"You are. You totally are."

"Your imaginary friend has good news?" Fancypants said.

She nodded. "Skullface's right where they held me, but Knowitall's got digs upstairs with a view."

"Really?" he said. "Why? Did she switch sides already? You'd think there'd be at least more paperwork."

Lift glanced down at Wyndle who said, "I believe her position is due to her injuries. The room seemed to be a medical facility, and I noted severe swelling along her jawline and several cuts along her mouth. She was handcuffed to her bed, so I doubt she is there by choice."

"Wyndle says she's hurt."

"What about Judas and Brutus?" Fluffy demanded.

"Wyndle says they're fine. He says that Lisa _ain't_ fine, so we gotta steal her first."

Fluffy glared at her. She glared so hard Lift could see it with her eyes closed. "I'm not leaving my dogs."

"You ain't gonna. We can rob the PRT all week, but you can't steal more'n you can carry. I can nab Knowitall faster than I can eat a pie, but I _can't_ get your dogs to follow me around all nice and quiet. I'd need to get _you_ in so you could get 'em out, and you ain't so quiet neither."

Fluffy glared at her, but she didn't deny the point.

"Right," she said, turning to the PRT building. They were on a nearby roof, carried there by Fluffy's last dog. Dogs that big stood out when they were covered in a heavy carapace with bony ridges all over, but none of the hero fliers were floating around this late at night.

Lift climbed down the wall as Wyndle grew in zigzagged lines to provide handholds, and she looked up at the building. It didn't look like much, not like the Protectorate Headquarters. The PHQ had _style_, standing out on the water with a glowing green dome over it. This was just a big square block made of glass. The walls were huge grids full of windows with gaps for the floors, and anyone who wanted to could look inside.

Looking in, she saw shutters. Curtains, too. Sometimes both. But if she wanted to, she could get close and peak through the cracks. Then she'd see, well, maybe a hero, but mostly guards and noodles. There were also all the things that she wouldn't see, like the fabrials that would alert folks to innocent thieves sneaking in and out. She had broken into the PHQ and had broken out of the PRT, but both times she had been alone. Being alone was easy for her. It always had been. Worrying about other people was the hard part.

"Which window is hers?" she said.

"Just around back, Mistress," Wyndle said. She followed him around the corner of the building and watched him circle around a spot a few floors up. The lights were off in that room. They were off in most of the rooms this late at night, but she couldn't climb straight up if she wanted to avoid all the rooms that were lit. Even though she was a Knight Radiant, she always felt safer in the shadows.

She mapped out a path in her mind—_up, up, over, up, up, over, over, down_—and set to climbing. Wyndle grew back and forth along the glass so it was like climbing a ladder, and she didn't even need to use her awesomeness. Which was good, 'cause glowing in the dark was terrible for sneaking.

Pretty soon she started to feel tired. Her arms were sore and she wanted to stop and take a break, but she couldn't. All it would take was one person coming into the wrong room at the wrong time and she'd be seen. She had to keep moving no matter what. Even going the wrong way was better than staying still.

Finally, she made it. "This the one?" she whispered. She was three stories up and smack dab in the middle of the side of the building.

Wyndle grew from down by her feet to up at eye level. He could get _long_ when he wanted to. "That is correct, Mistress." He frowned. "Have you given any thought on how you are going to get inside?"

"Sure. I'll turn you into a Wyndleblade, cut a hole in ... the glass ... aw, bollocks."

"Language, Mistress," he said.

"Bollocks and jiggers."

He sighed. "Perhaps if you had some seeds you could grow a vine on the wall, grab onto that, and then cut your way in."

"Ain't got no seeds no more." She used to have some rockvine seeds in her pocket, but that was before she had been arrested. Starvin' heroes. You couldn't get good vines around here, and those seeds were irreplaceable. "Maybe I could climb up a level, turn you into a blade, and stab into the window while I'm falling."

"That could work," he said. "_If_ you can time it correctly, and _if_ you can angle it so you don't cut a gash all the way to the bottom of the building, _and_ if the structural integrity of the glass is sufficient to hold your weight without breaking."

"Right," she said, nodding. "Let's do it."

She climbed to the window of the room above Lisa's, with Wyndle whimpering all the way. "Ready?"

"No, and I never will be."

"On the count of three."

"Falling from this distance would hurt a great deal. It would be loud, too, so you'll almost certainly be noticed."

"One ..."

"Perhaps we could go back down and think about this."

"Two ...

"Oh Mother," he whispered. "Mother, Mother, Mother."

Lift hesitated.

"Um, Mistress? Three comes after two in case you've forgotten again."

Instead of dropping, she reached down with her leg and traced a line across the glass with her big toe, making it Slick. Without friction holding the screws and bits in place, the entire window pane fell out and crashed down below. It was loud, but it was loud far from where she was. She dropped down, grabbed onto Wyndle's lowest vine, and swung into the room.

It was dark, so she lit herself up, making awesomeness drift off of her like glowing steam. She saw Lisa lying in a bed, her left wrist cuffed to it, and her face looking like someone had hit her with a hammer.

Lisa was watching her, unmoving and unspeaking. This was wrong. Lisa _always_ had words, she was _made_ of words. But not now. And she was so _still_. She didn't wave, she didn't sit up and say, "Hey, Leaf. What took you?" She didn't point an accusing finger, glare, and say, "Where the hell were you, Lift? Where the hell where you?"

She just looked at her, desperate, pleading, and afraid.

Lift moved toward her, and the brightness of her light made Lisa's eyes water. She slipped off the handcuffs first. With a touch they fell to pieces, but even freed, Lisa didn't move. Lift took her hand, but it felt cold and limp.

Then she leaned over, cupped Lisa's face in her hands, and blew.

Lisa's eyes went wide as she experienced the Surge of Regrowth for the first time. She inhaled sharply and her body went rigid, and then slowly relaxed. She sat up and threw her arms around Lift, trying to squeeze her until she popped.

"I'm sorry," Lift said softly. "I ... I should've been there."

Lisa pushed her back to arm's length so she could look her in the eye. "Hey," she said. "Yer an Undershider now. Zat meansh no regretsh, no matter what."

Lift coughed a laugh. "What? Why do you sound like that?"

Lisa grinned, revealing a mouth that glistened with metal. "Got new brashesh. What do you shink?"

"I _shink _that someone wanted to shut you up real bad."

"Y'can shay zat again. Unshtick 'em fer me?"

Lift ran a finger across Lisa's plated teeth and nearly cut herself. Lisa turned her head and spat out far more wires than ever should have been able to fit in there, then roared in laughter. "Oh _yes_! That was an experience that I never want to repeat. I ... I really look bad with braces. Grade school was a hard time for me." She got out of bed and stretched, wearing a simple blue dress that came down to her knees. "Want to get ice cream? When we get out of here, we're getting ice cream, my treat."

"I-ice cream?"

"Absolutely." Lisa stopped and looked down at her. "Hey Leaf, look at me. No matter what happens, I want you to know that _you_ are the best thing that has ever happened to us, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Especially not yourself. Got it?"

She wasn't there when she should have been, but she was there now. And she'd make up for it, no matter what it took. "Got it."

"Good. Now that that's out of the way, do you have an escape plan?"

She shook her head, feeling better. "Nah. Plans ain't my style. Figured I'd just, you know, be awesome and figure it out from there."

"And you gotta have style." She stuck her head out through where the window used to be and looked around. Below them a couple of guards were around the window waving flashlights around. The glass somehow hadn't shattered, but if you were going to make a building out of the stuff, you'd want it to be as strong as possible. Lisa leaned out further until she had to grab onto the edge of the next window frame to keep from falling out, searching for something along the skyline. "Hey!" she yelled, waving her free arm. "Over here, Bitch! Come and get me!"

The guards looked up and pointed their flashlights at them.

"Okay. They're going to come in through that door any second now, so we need to get down fast. How long of a pole can you make?"

Lift looked down at Wyndle and held out a hand. He formed a rod that filled the small room and shot out into the night.

"Good." Lisa took the rod and held it by the end. "Wish me luck!" She jumped out the window and wrapped her arms and legs round the pole in midair. The bottom end hit the ground upright, and Lisa slid down. It wasn't a graceful landing, especially at the end when she fell over, but grace was for fancy rich folks who could afford to worry about that sort of thing.

The guards pointed their guns at her and barked out orders that Lift couldn't hear. Lisa put her hands behind her head, but when Fluffy came charging in on her dog's back, the guards took off running.

"If I had known that she was going to try that," Wyndle said, coming back, "I would have chosen a different form. Something with a wider base for balance perhaps, or a point at the end to stick into the ground."

The door burst open, and a series of flashlights blinded her. "Don't move!" said a voice behind the lights.

"Wanna try again?" she said.

He sighed. "Oh, if I must."

"Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head!"

"'Kay. Imma do a backflip."

Wyndle groaned. "Please don't. It's dangerous enough without additional—"

"I _said_, get on your—"

Lift did a backflip out into the night because you gotta have _style_, and tried the same maneuver Lisa had. It worked way better for Lisa, probably because she wasn't flipping around when she tried it, but even though she got the wind knocked out of her so bad she couldn't even cuss proper, at least she didn't go splat.

"Get on!" Lisa said, sitting behind Fluffy on the dog's back.

Lift scrambled to her feet and grabbed onto the dog's tail, then slicked her legs and got on her knees. "I'm good. Go!"

The dog took off at a run, leaving the world behind.

WWW

"You know," Alec said afterwards, "not a lot of girls can pull off the hospital gown look. So don't feel bad that you couldn't either."

After heading back home to change, the team had gone out for ice-cream. They hadn't gotten around to feeding her in the hospital, and besides, Lisa had promised. Rachel had gotten a vanilla cone because she hadn't wanted to come and was determined to enjoy it as little as possible. Lisa had gotten two scoops of butter pecan because ice cream was as good of a nepenthe as anything, and Alec had gotten a turtle sundae.

Lift had gotten a banana split with blue moo cookie dough, cotton candy, and strawberry cheesecake ice cream with hot fudge, caramel, pineapple, nuts, strawberries, whipped cream, and cherries on top, and had managed to get most of it on her face. She was spooning great scoops of the stuff into her mouth, grinning up at her with full cheeks.

"Aw, thanks," she said. "And I'm touched that you were willing to put in the minimum amount of effort to rescue me." They were sitting at a table outside an ice cream parlor called _Mr. Moo's_, and this late at night there wasn't much danger in being overheard. The middle-aged Hispanic woman working the graveyard shift might recognize Rachel, but if she wanted to antagonize a supervillain who was peacefully eating ice cream, she deserved everything that would happen to that entire street.

He shrugged modestly. "I know you'd do the same for me."

"We're wasting time here," Rachel growled. "The job's not even close to finished."

_Worried about changes in team dynamic in Brian's absence. Worried more about dogs. Worried that dogs will die in PRT custody. Has lost dogs before to human indifference._

"We have enough time to do this right," Lisa said. "It was a lousy day for all of us, but most of the damage is already done. The heroes unmasked me and they'll be able to piece together my background to better predict what I'll do. They've done the same to Brian too, and that will hurt him a lot more than it will hurt me. Even worse, they beat us, so they'll be more confident when facing us in the future. But none of that will change if we wait a few days."

"A few _days_?" Lift said, looking up. "Brian's gonna be starvin' miserable till then."

_Starving saccharine derivative of storming. Deliberate childish affectation to hold on to past. Resists adulthood. Repressed guilt. _

She blocked off the flow of information. The ice cream tasted good in her mouth, but that paled in comparison to the sublime experience of being able to wiggle her own toes, which she wouldn't have had if it weren't for Lift. It was the little things that you learned to appreciate only after losing them, like basic bodily functions in Lisa's case, or long dead mothers in Lift's. If the kid didn't want to act her age or follow basic rules of etiquette, what was that to her?

"He'll be more miserable if we all get captured. If I thought he'd cut a deal with the PRT for a reduced sentence, then yeah I'd rush to bust him out, but that's not going to happen."

"Why not?" Alec said. He sounded like he was making conversation, but even that was an unusual amount of interest for him.

_Stunted emotional depth, attempt appearance of emotional health by imitating those around him._

"They won't give him what he wants," Lisa said. "If the PRT was smart, which they aren't, they'd offer him a spot on the local team and help him with the custody battle, and then he'd love them forever and wonder why he ever wasted his time being a villain. But if they're stupid, which they are, the best offer they'll give him will be to ship him off to a team on the other side of the country to cut him off from nefarious influences, like us—"

"Damn straight we are."

"—and let him visit his sister in a few years, _if _he behaves himself. By then Aisha will be so jacked up on sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll he won't be able to recognize her anymore. So he'll choose prison, knowing that we'll break him out as soon as we can, and even though he'll never be able to be his sister's _legal_ guardian, he'll still be able to look after her _illegally_, which suits him better anyway."

Until then, he'd be stuck in a cell. A prison larger than his own head and with a few creature comforts like working arms and legs, but that was all that level of physical autonomy would be, comfort. He wouldn't be in control of his own life, and he'd be entirely at the mercy of his enemies and of his friends, if and when the Undersiders got to him. There would only be one choice of his that mattered, and he had made that choice long ago.

Maybe they could kidnap Panacea. Hold her hostage until the PRT released him. It was a terrible idea of course, and it was a surefire way to bring every hero in the city down on their heads. On the other hand, they could use that to draw the heroes out and then hit the PRT Headquarters while they were gone ...

"And what about my dogs?" Rachel said.

"Your dogs will be even easier to rescue," she said, coming back to the present. The kidnapping plan was more motivated by spite than anything else, and they needed to focus on other things. "The PRT wants to study them to figure out your powers. After they're done, they'll drop Judas and Brutus off at the nearest dog shelter, and we can pick them up then."

Rachel glared at her. "If you're wrong, if they start _dissecting _them ..."

That was, well, not likely, but it wasn't impossible either. The scientists would be looking for information they could _use_, ways to either replicate Rachel's power or counter it in the field. Basic examination wouldn't reveal anything besides two remarkably healthy and well trained dogs, and they couldn't experiment extensively because two dogs weren't nearly a large enough sample size to yield relevant data.

But _I doubt it_ wasn't the sort of answer that would keep Rachel from charging headlong into battle. "They _won't_, Rachel, I promise."

"So we just ... what?" Alec said. "Do nothing? I mean, that's playing to my strengths, sure, but ..."

"We could," Lisa said. "That's the easiest option. With Brian and two of the dogs gone, our jobs won't be nearly as high profile until we get them back. And if we don't get back at the heroes soon, our rep's going to end up somewhere between Uber and Leet and Skidmark, which is going to be a hassle to make up for.

"But if we do break them out of the PRT—and I strongly suggest we do—there are a few things I need to take care of first. The boss owes us twenty-five thousand dollars that I intend to collect, and we might be able to squeeze some support out of him while we're at it. Then there's research on the PRT security measures, et cetera, et cetera. So if we have to wait a few days or even a week before busting Brian out of prison, we'll be fine."

Waiting was such an easy thing to do when you were in control, and such a horrendous thing when you weren't. But they _would_ get Brian out, one way or another. Rachel was the strongest member and Lisa was the smartest, but Brian was far and away the most disciplined. He was arguably the most disciplined, the most grounded member of the team, and the Undersiders wouldn't be the same without him.

Besides, planning the rescue helped her cope with her own recent stay in PRT custody, which she did by taking a page out of Alec's book and repressing the hell out of it. She leaned back in her chair, took a bite out of her ice cream cone, and smiled.

WWW

The next night the city exploded. Or at least a small portion of it.

Lisa jolted awake, her mind racing.

_Fourteen milliton explosion, west-south-west, twelve miles away, terrorist bombing, Tinkertech bomb, Bakuda._

Twelve miles? Not in her neighborhood. Downtown. Empire territory. Empire target?

_No. Soft target to instill fear and panic. May target power grid._

She got out of bed and flipped on the light switch. Nothing happened.

_Already targeted power grid. Instill fear and panic. Nonfocused attack pattern. Seemingly random to prevent organized response._

And that meant that the heroes were going to mount a _dis_organized response. They'd be too busy putting out fires to do much else. They'll be spread out all over the city ...

"Oh, hell yeah!"

People would die, absolutely. Some people were probably already dead, which was a tragedy. But tragedies happened all the time, so why not take advantage of it while they could?

She pulled on a pair of pants and bolted out the door.

"Wake up! Everyone, you're going to miss the fireworks!"

An assortment of grunts and growls greeted her. Lift stumbled out of her door and flared with light, jolting herself awake with the influx of energy.

"What's going on?"

Lisa grinned. "It's the Fourth of July, Lift! Get dressed and fast, because it's our very own Independence Day!"

She blinked. "_What_?"

Her powers gave her a flood of information that she didn't need right now, most of which she already knew_._ "The heroes are going to be busy for the next while," she said. "Get in costume and make it fast, because before they're done, we're going to bust Brian out of prison."

WWW

A/n And that's it for chapter eight. It's my birthday today, and publishing a new chapter was the best and most narcissistic birthday present I could think of, and that wouldn't have been possible without the timely and precise support of my editor, Exiled Immortal. He always somehow keys in on what matters most in each chapter, and always seems to understand my story better than I do.

As always, thank you to my readers, and thank you especially to my s Exiled Immortal and Prime 2.0, without whose support this story would simply not be here.

"But hold on," I hear you say. "Where's the rest of this? This isn't a satisfying ending to a chapter at all! I didn't come here for _half_ a jailbreak."

And to that I say, good point. When I first finished this chapter, it was about twelve thousand words, so I ended up cutting it in half. And that means, _and that means_, dear reader, that chapter nine is already written. You may expect it in precisely one week. See you then.


	9. Chapter 9

Leaf

Chapter Nine

Sometimes being a hero was fun. Sometimes it was exciting. Sometimes it could be downright terrifying.

Tonight was not one of those times.

Vista had woken up in the middle of the night with a call to action. A PRT van drove her to HQ ... where she sat at a computer while the rest of her team saved the city. Aegis was flying in and out of burning buildings, carrying people to safety. Gallant was evacuating civilians and stopping looters, doing what he could to calm the panicked masses. Clockblocker was freezing the injured until paramedics could get to them. Kid Win was with Aegis, putting out fires with his definitely-not-a-freeze-ray-that's-a-stupid-name-why-would-you-call-it-that gun. Browbeat, who had joined _that week_, was out there! Heck, even Shadow Stalker was doing search and rescue, and she had all the bedside manner of a diseased troll!

Meanwhile, Vista, one of the most powerful and experienced members of the team, the girl who could warp space at will, was staring at a computer screen.

"_Why would they blow up a hospital?"_ Clockblocker said through the comm. "_I mean, there's supervillainy, and then there's just being a complete asshole. What's wrong with her? Does she just hate people?"_

"_Bakuda's a supervillain, Clock,"_ Aegis replied. "_That's what they do. And we'll deal with it. That's what __**we**_ _do."_

"_But, I mean, where do we even __**send**_ _them? The next hospital over right before Bakuda bombs that one too?"_

"_She'll run out of bombs eventually," _Kid Win offered. "_Almost no one can mass produce Tinkertech."_

"_Almost?" _Shadow Stalker's voice was dripping with sarcasm. "_Fantastic. I'm just oozing with confidence."_

"_Yeah, but what else is new?" _Clockblocker said.

This went on. Whenever there was a whitelisted villain like Uber and Leet, Circus, or the Undersiders they had fought just the other day, Vista could go into the field. But whenever the Empire or the ABB pulled a job? Whenever there was the slightest hint that the villain in question was a homicidal maniac? In short, the villains who really _needed_ to be stopped? As soon as they showed their faces, Vista was suddenly a delicate little girl who needed to be protected.

That was true for all the Wards, which was why they were on cleanup duty and doing search and rescue while the Protectorate heroes were the first responders, but at least her teammates got to be _second_ responders. She might as well be playing solitaire for all she was contributing.

Then an alarm went off.

"Hold on, guys, I think the PRT building's being attacked." She accessed the security cams. "No way."

"_More bad news?"_ Aegis said.

"Sort of. It's not the ABB, though. Just the Undersiders."

Tattletale was with them. They had brought her in yesterday—or two days ago now that it was after midnight—with a broken neck. Despite that, she had escaped only a few hours later and didn't seem to be hurt at all. No one was sure how yet, but the possibilities ranged from a Stranger power to fake her injury to Tinkertech medication that her team had somehow acquired.

The latest briefing had mentioned that they'd recruited a new cape, a girl named Leaf who was something of a jailbreak specialist. It sounded like Leaf had gotten herself arrested on purpose a few weeks ago just to see if she could escape. And she could, easily. The PRT seemed physically incapable of taking any parahuman under fourteen seriously, and that bias benefitted some capes more than others. It was Leaf who had sprung Tattletale out of the hospital wing the night before. Her powers were—Vista quickly looked up her file—friction negation and a sword sharp enough to cut through metal. So a mix between Brandish and Assault, kind of? And something to do with plants.

Regent was still Regent, a minor annoyance unless you let him taze you, but Hellhound was down to one dog. The dogs were the scariest part of the bank fight, and Vista could handle just one.

"I'm going to deal with them."

"_What? Without backup?"_

Vista wanted to say, _I'm not a little kid, Aegis. I can handle some minor villains all by myself._ But nothing made her sound more like a little kid than asserting that she was not a little kid, which was frustrating beyond all reason.

"_She'll have backup," _Shadow Stalker said. "_I'm heading back right now."_

Vista froze. Was _Shadow Stalker_ of all people being _supportive_?

"_Hold on," Aegis said. "We don't know what they're up to. If they're not working with the ABB, they're not a priority, and if they are, then it's too dangerous._

"_They're not a priority for __**you**__,_ Shadow Stalker snapped. "_You arrested Grue without me, and I'll be damned before I let the rest of his team break him out without me too. I'm __**going**__, Aegis. Either you can give me the order, or you can write me up for it afterwards, I don't care which."_

Oh. Nevermind, it was just Shadow Stalker's Grue obsession acting up again. For a moment she'd been worried.

"Whatever you guys decide to do, I'll be upstairs," she said. "I'll watch out for Hellhound's last dog and try to slow them down however I can."

She raced toward the elevator and got inside. It was Tinkertech and felt like it was standing still when it was going several times faster than its normal counterpart. It was still a wait, though, a wait before a fight.

Gallant focused on his teammates before combat, trying to cheer them up or calm them down as he saw fit. Browbeat's preparations, she learned just the other day, were more physical. His body inflated like a balloon, only instead of air he filled himself up with rock hard muscles. Shadow Stalker got angry—_angrier_—clenching her fists and snapping at anyone who spoke to her, trying to work herself into a frenzy to increase her heart rate and filling her blood with adrenaline.

Vista let her awareness ... spread out. Her nerves ended where her skin did, but when she wanted to, her senses could flow through the entire PRT building and into the streets beyond. With so few staff left in the building, she could practically _feel_ it, from the top of the roof to the bottom of the Wards HQ, like clay beneath her fingers.

It took her a while to expand to her limits, but when she had the time, when, for example, she had been sitting in one room for the past hour in front of a computer, she was a giant.

The door opened to the ground floor, and what she saw was pretty much what she had expected. Her power recoiled from people, leaving a sense of wooden stiffness in occupied spaces, but those blind spots allowed her to infer where people were even when she couldn't see them.

There were twelve PRT troopers in the lobby, although half of them were already stuck to the ground with their own containment foam while a couple others were being bowled over by a girl riding a mutant dog. That was Hellhound; Vista wasn't sure why she was splitting off from the rest of her group, but she wasn't about to complain. Regent was making disdainful gestures with his scepter, causing the remaining troopers to miss or hit each other with their foam. Tattletale and Leaf were running for a different group of elevators.

Outnumbered as she was, Vista decided on a simple strategy: divide and conquer. The Undersiders had always been a slippery bunch, but tonight they were on her turf.

With decisive intent, Vista blocked off the entrance to the hallway that Hellhound had just vanished down, ensuring that the biggest combat threat wouldn't be returning anytime soon. A sudden muscle spasm forced her to one knee but she gritted her teeth and maintained her focus. She enlarged several pieces of furniture to gargantuan proportions, hemming in Regent and cutting off his line of sight. The muscle spasms intensified, then relented; he had his hands full now with the PRT troopers trapped with him.

That left Leaf and Tattletale. Leaf's friction negation made her immune to containment foam, a bad matchup for the troopers. Could she share that immunity with her teammates?

Whatever. If the troopers couldn't help her then she'd do it herself. Leaf shouted in surprise as the floor itself sprung up as a barrier in front of her. Another barrier swiftly separated her from Tattletale. Within seconds the little villain was enclosed on all sides, but before Vista could consider her next move, Leaf was clambering over the unnaturally stretched floor tiles as though she did this every day.

Vista took a moment to process that. The surface she had created was perfectly smooth, and more than tall enough that a girl like Leaf shouldn't have been able to climb it. Was her power more friction manipulation than friction negation? Tattletale shouted something, prompting Leaf to look around until her eyes settled on Vista. A playful grin appeared on the villain's face. Vista felt an instinctual twinge of alarm and responded by stretching the distance between them a good twenty times its natural length. Undeterred, Leaf got a running start and then dropped to her knees, shooting forward across the ground. Vista turned and ran for another hallway, kneading the floor with her power so that it rippled and swelled and sunk into what should have been a grueling obstacle course.

Leaf was flung from her knees and onto her belly when she hit the first hump, but this didn't arrest her momentum at all. Instead she continued to slip and slide across the warped terrain like a skier on a slope of bunny hills. Or a penguin.

"Woah!" Leaf said, laughing and sounding far more enthusiastic than Vista would have liked. "Nice! This is _awesome_!"

"Stop enjoying this," Vista muttered. What was this, a school playground? This was why nobody took capes their age seriously. There were so few child capes on the scene, and one idiot could give them all a bad rap; would it kill this girl to have some dignity?

They sped into the hallway, Leaf gaining ground with every moment. Vista had been preparing for this. In an instant she pinched off the hallway between her and the villain, stretching the walls, floor, and ceiling until they touched and formed a barrier. With another flex of her power she pinched off the other end. She heard a loud bump and a groan as Leaf finally came to a stop. Vista allowed herself a satisfied smile. The villain was trapped.

Then, to her astonishment, a silver blade poked through the stretched surface and began carving through it as if it was butter. It took only a moment to cut a circle, from which shining white steam began to seep. The newly carved plug slid forward and promptly returned to its original proportions as chunks of drywall, concrete, and plaster. Leaf stuck her head through the resulting hole, still grinning, and then launched herself at Vista.

Vista stretched the space between them as far as she could to buy herself precious seconds. As a last ditch measure she bent the whole hallway at a right angle so that Leaf's momentum should have sent her crashing straight into a wall. Instead, a silver stake appeared in Leaf's hand, which she drove into the floor, allowing her to swerve easily around the corner and right into Vista.

The two of them were instantly tangled up and sent tumbling across the ground. Vista felt her concentration break; all of the careful changes she'd made to the area slowly reverted back to normal. Dazed by the impact, Vista tried to cling to the conviction that she hadn't panicked, she hadn't yelped or squealed. She'd done everything she could to not embarrass herself.

And yet here she was, pinned to the ground by a girl who was no older than her, and a great deal more immature. She fumed silently. Leaf smiled wider than ever, her eyes sparkling through her mask.

"Tag."

Vista blinked. "What?"

"Tag. You know how tag works, doncha? You can't use your powers on me after I've tagged you."

That ... it wasn't like it was a game with _rules_, but she couldn't bend the space between them if there _was_ no space between them. Vista considered CQC for a moment. She was the worst fighter on the team, but she knew she could hold her own against most people in her weight category, and Leaf was the first villain she had faced in costume that was her size. But Leaf wasn't exactly unarmed, and that raised the stakes as much as it lowered Vista's odds. As much as it galled her, she had no choice but to play along.

"Okay, I'm tagged. Now what?"

Leaf hesitated. "Dunno. Hey, Knowitall!" She slid her arms under Vista's armpits and wrapped her up in a bear hug before pulling them both to their feet. "What do I do with this?"

Tattletale sauntered into view in no apparent hurry, despite the sounds of Regent still tangling with the remaining PRT troopers. It seemed that she had every confidence her teammate would be able to take care of himself, just like she'd been confident that Leaf would prevail when she sicced her on Vista. Tattletale smiled at her, and that smile chilled Vista to the bone.

"Hey, Vista," Tattletale said. "We never got the chance to talk last time we met."

Talk. Right. Glory Girl and Panacea had _talked_ to her at the bank, and afterwards they had been traumatized. Panacea didn't go out in the field much, but Glory Girl had fought some of the biggest, scariest monsters in the city _without_ taking them into custody in an ambulance, and yet it was this Tattletale who had gotten to her. Tattletale, who apparently could walk off a broken neck. Tattletale, who could read minds. Tattletale, who could break people in ways that physical force never could.

"But we don't have the time right now either," she said, her voice curt and businesslike. "So I'll make this quick. You have two choices, Vista. One, you cooperate. You call it a night, let us grab Grue and Bitch's dogs, and we'll be out of here before you know it. No one gets hurt, and we can all go about our business.

"Two, we knock you out, and you _know _that won't be as clean as it is in the movies. You probably won't end up with permanent brain damage, but you'll have a concussion and have to stay out of action for the next couple of weeks. And let me tell you, you think tonight is bad with Bakuda introducing herself to the city? The next week is going to be pure hell, and your team's going to need you more than ever. No one's going to be disappointed in you if you lose a fight when outnumbered four to one, but if you get yourself hurt at a time like this? You'll be letting them down."

Vista took a breath and said nothing. She had expected to be threatened, blackmailed, and patronized (she always expected to be patronized), but she had _not_ expected to be reasoned with. Glory Girl had made Tattletale sound like the devil haggling for souls, not like ... not like _Gallant _trying to convince her not to take foolish risks.

"The only one who might give you a hard time is your resident psycho, Shadow Stalker," Tattletale continued. "But Leaf beat her up a couple weeks ago, so that would be grossly hypocritical of her."

Vista looked over her shoulder at Leaf. "_You_ fought Shadow Stalker?"

"Knocked her out and left her in a dumpster," Tattletale said.

Leaf grinned. "That's how I joined the team."

Vista tried to imagine Shadow Stalker—intense, aggressive, and vicious to the point of cruelty—in a fight with Leaf. Leaf, with her dorky grin, childish glee, and ... and was she wearing a _Protectorate T-shirt_ like the kind they sold in the PRT gift shop? That was in terrible taste no matter how she looked at it. "_What_?"

"It's a funny story," Tattletale said. "I'll have time to tell you the whole thing if you pick the first option, though if you don't choose now I'm going to assume you're stalling."

Stalling would have been a good idea. She didn't know how much backup her team was sending, but time was more on her side than theirs, not that she had much of it. Vista focused on the issue at hand. True, mass-murdering terrorists were a higher priority than bank robbers, and there was no guarantee that the heroes were going to bring in Bakuda any time soon. Tattletale made a lot of good points all around, but it was _Tattletale_ making them.

Her team would understand no matter what she did. That was the thing about them, they expected so little of her when she knew that she could do more. But if she stood her ground until the villains beat her senseless, her teammates would think her foolish. If she rolled over for the villains and let them break out their teammate, they'd think her weak.

There wasn't a way to win in this situation. Just two different ways to lose.

As she tried to think, Vista gradually became aware of a rumbling sound, distant but growing louder by the second. It wasn't only her who had noticed. Tattletale's head swiveled back towards the lobby and her eyes widened. "Get down!" Tattletale yelled.

Vista dropped to the floor, dragging Leaf along with her. When a Thinker sounded that panicked it was a good idea to listen. Almost reflexively she raised the floor into a hump that would cover them. Moments later there was a tremendous shattering and crashing as a truck burst through the front of the building before screeching to a halt in the center of the lobby. The back of the vehicle slid open and armed ABB members began spilling out.

Tattletale took one look at Vista, her expression unreadable. Then she grabbed Leaf by the arm and scrambled up over the hump and back into the lobby, leaving the young Ward by herself. They were probably worried about their teammates, Vista realized, but it still annoyed her to be left behind. She climbed to her feet and followed.

The lobby had become a warzone. The ABB was firing indiscriminately; those few PRT troopers who were free to run were making a swift retreat. With practiced skill Vista raised barriers and dug trenches against the hail of bullets. She dove into the nearest trench herself. Peeking out from cover she spotted Regent taking shelter on the other side of the room behind a pillar, pinned down by gunfire.

"Leaf!" he called.

Like a glowing streak Leaf shot out into the thick of the ABB, leaving behind a stream of white light in her wake. Regent waved his scepter and whole groups of gunmen slipped and fell in unison. He let out a scream and clutched his arm, seemingly unable to perform that feat again. Meanwhile Leaf scurried among the gang members, touching as many of their weapons as she could, making those glow as well before they promptly fell to pieces.

Vista felt her pulse quicken as a bullet caught Leaf in the shoulder, and then in the throat. The girl flopped to the ground, but more of that strange light began to steam from the wounds, healing them rapidly until Leaf was back on her feet and sliding into cover beside Regent.

_A Brute rating on top of everything else?_ Vista made a mental note to file a complaint about the threat assessment the Wards had been provided. She hadn't memorized every detail, but Leaf's file had made her sound like a minor threat at best. The Undersiders were clearly treating her like a heavy hitter and she was delivering.

_I guess they don't think __**she's **__too young to see action._

Shoving that thought aside and refocusing on the situation, Vista tried to plan her next move. _Could I trap them together? Let the Undersiders and the ABB wear each other out until backup arrives? _Maybe, but she couldn't be sure. If it was the ABB and the Empire, then that would absolutely work, but for these two gangs she wasn't certain. They were fighting now, but they might call a truce instead if they became desperate, and then Vista would be doubly screwed. Besides, they both operated out of the same territory, didn't they? So it would make sense that they'd be familiar with each other, and it wasn't like their objectives were mutually exclusive. The Undersiders wanted to break Grue out of his holding cell, and the ABB ... probably wanted to do the same for Lung.

Oh crap. Oh _crap_! If Vista was right, then the entire bombing spree was nothing more than a distraction, and the real fight was playing out right in front of her. Fighting the Undersiders was one thing. They hurt people, but they hadn't killed anyone since they became a team. But the ABB? Most capes played by certain rules, but the ABB had enough normal members who didn't mind shooting anyone who got in their way, cape or not. And out of the capes they had, Bakuda had shown complete disregard for human life tonight, Lung was more of a warlord than a gang leader, and Oni Lee ...

If Aegis were here, he'd tell her to retreat to the Wards HQ, no questions asked. Piggot would agree with him, because dead Wards were terrible publicity. And the Youth Guard? Ha! The Youth Guard would demand to know why she was up so late past her bedtime. Everyone above and beside her would tell her to get down, stay down, and leave the heroics to the adults.

But they weren't here. _She _was. Besides, it wasn't like _Leaf_ was waiting around for someone else to handle this.

She stood up and looked and felt her way across the battlefield. With the entire area saturated with her power, she took the entire lobby—and _twisted _it like a corkscrew. It was a new trick she'd been practicing, one that everyone in the rooms above and below her would hate her for. She couldn't move people, but by warping the space between them, many of the criminals would find their fellow intruders standing on what they perceived to be the ceiling.

Clockblocker once described the experience as riding one of those more questionable carnival rides after gorging yourself on cotton candy that had been laced with LSD. Hypothetically.

Vista smiled to herself as most of the fighting came to an abrupt halt. The combatants were too busy trying to make sense of up and down to focus on punching, stabbing, or shooting each other. This was _working_. Now she just had to wall off the separate groups and hold as many as she could until—

A hand grabbed her by the hair from behind, yanking her backwards so roughly that she screamed in the pain. Who? How? She should have been able to sense anyone sneaking up behind her ... unless they were a teleporter. And the ABB only had one cape who could teleport.

"You children and your games," Oni Lee said.

Vista heard the sound of his sword as it whistled through the air. She felt a sharp pain in her neck, and then she flew.

WWW

It had been fun, for a bit. First the lawmen had tried shooting them with their goop, and Fancypants had made them twitch so badly they shot each other, and then the girl in green had shown up, and she'd made the room wiggle and wobble like jelly. It was a shame they didn't have more time, because together they could have made the world's greatest fun slide. The possibilities were _endless_.

Then the new guys with guns had turned up, and they weren't shooting goop. Fighting them was less fun and hurt more, but Lift had still managed to enjoy herself as she cut loose and helped ruin their night.

Then ... then Oni Lee had appeared, and it all turned red. They didn't cut rubies that red. No garden grew flowers that red. And there was so _much _of it, enough to cover the floor and paint the walls, all from one little body. She ... she had been tying the room up in knots, and ... and ...

It had been an instant. All it took. All it was.

"Mistress!" Wyndle shouted.

She had frozen in place right out in the open, staring at the headless little corpse on the ground. The men with guns didn't hesitate. A series of bullets caught her in the back. It was like being stabbed with hot pokers, knocking her to her hands and knees even as her awesomeness worked to repair the damage.

A bestial growl announced that Fluffy had returned. She had found her dogs, and they were quickly growing to match the one she was riding. There was renewed gunfire, followed by screaming. Out of the corner of her eye Lift saw a dog picking up a man in its mouth and shaking him like a chew toy.

Time. It wasn't too late, not yet. And if Oni Lee wanted to start stealin' heads, then she could steal them right back. He carried the head with his fingers tangled in her hair, still dripping from the neck. He held the head in front of a fabrial like some kind of key. A moment later the elevator door opened up.

Lift dashed forward and tried to keep her balance on Slick feet. She had seen voidbringers do it at Thaylen's Field, but she hadn't been too successful at imitating them. She couldn't stop or turn on Slick feet, but storms she was _faster_.

The room she sped through was a twisted mess, and she had to keep moving while hoping that what she saw as _up_ would become _forward_ by the time she got there, but already the world was unraveling, trying to forget that Vista had twisted it up in the first place. The world always forgot you when you were gone. People lived and died on it, cultivated it, and called it _Mother_, but it was nothing more than a big stone.

Oni Lee stepped into the elevator. Lift bent her knees and then hurled herself forward at the last second, tackling him from behind. He stumbled, but Lift held on, long enough to get one hand on Vista's head. She made it Slick and when it slid from his grasp, she snatched it. With the prize in hand, she kicked off away from him. She landed on her back outside the elevator, Vista's head cradled against her chest and staining her shirt. Oni Lee looked down at her, his hand on the hilt of his sword, but she formed a shardblade in her own hand, four feet long and as menacing as Wyndle could manage. It was a threat so obvious even Oni Lee couldn't miss it.

He didn't. "Run and hide, little one," he said, not moving from his position. "Lung waits below, and I have no time for you."

The elevator doors slid shut. Good riddance. She hurried to Vista's body. It lay in a pool of blood that was slowly spreading. She stuck the head on the neck and prayed to whatever gods were still alive and whatever Heralds weren't yet broken that she wasn't too late. She was faster than she'd been when Darkness' minion had slit Gawx's throat. She was slower than when Darkness had cut down Tiqqa in the Yeddaw market with his shardblade.

Knowitall had started yelling something and was running toward her, but she'd deal with that later. She bent down close to Vista's face and breathed out, emptying herself of all the awesomeness she had left. _Not too late._ A could of shimmering light left her mouth, floated there—_not too late_—and entered Vista's. The seam around her neck vanished without a scar as her chest swelled with air.

Lift tried to push herself to her feet, feeling as hungry and as tired as she had ever felt. She managed to form a Wyndlechair beneath her in time to collapse into it. She wanted to eat something, sleep, and then eat some more. Knowitall came up to her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"I wasn't sure you could do that," she said. "But I knew you'd try. Of _course_ you'd try, no matter who might be watching. And if word gets out that you can raise the dead, well, let's just say that stunt didn't work out too well for Jesus. We'll just have to hope that the heroes will be able to keep a lid on this, and who knows? You saved one of theirs, so you'd think they'd owe us something. C'mon. Let's go home."

Lift looked across the lobby. It was torn up, gouged and pockmarked in ways and places that shouldn't even have been possible. The rest of the ABB members had retreated out the shattered front entrance when faced with Fluffy's dogs. She was atop one of them, pacing back and forth, keeping watch in case of another attack. Fancypants was leaning against the truck in the middle of the lobby, waiting for the two of them.

"What about Skullface?"

"The jailbreak's a bust. I thought the ABB might try something, but I assumed Lung was going to be in the PHQ. I guess they moved him here for, I don't know, medical reasons? And Oni Lee wasn't supposed to be on his feet yet, but it looks like they kidnapped Panacea and made her heal him." Knowitall smiled to herself. "They probably threatened to kill her and blow up her family if she didn't cooperate, so there's a silver lining to all of this."

Lift looked down at Vista. Her green costume was stained in blood and her blond hair was matted to her head, but she was breathing. "He's going after Lung."

Knowitall nodded.

"Skullface is down there too."

She nodded again.

"He's gonna hurt him?"

"I can't say for certain. Lung's high security, Grue's on the low end, so they're not going to be in the same cell block. The only way Oni Lee would know that he's even down there is ... if he read the newspaper and heard about Grue's arrest. So it's possible, but I'd still say that Grue's chances are better than yours if you went down after him, in the state you're in."

Her state? She still felt weak. _Strength before weakness._

Lift looked up at her. "I'm a better thief than he is."

"And he wouldn't hesitate to kill you. You would."

She didn't deny it. "That don't make him better'n me." _Life before death._ "Get the others and go." Fluffy's dogs wouldn't fit in the elevator when they were big, and Lift couldn't risk taking anyone else. "Me and Skullface'll meet you back home."

Knowitall shook her head. She looked sad, like she knew that nothing she said would make a difference. "This won't end well."

_Journey before the destination._ Nothing ended well. That was the problem with endings. But it wasn't over yet, not unless she left now. Unless she left Brian trapped with two people who wanted him dead. She didn't know if she could make a difference as hungry as she was, but she _couldn't not_ try. She promised she would long ago. Lift gave Knowitall the most confident grin she could manage. "I'll be back before you know it. We both will."

"Wait." Knowitall reached into her pocket. She pulled out two candy bars. "I don't know how much you can get out of these, but you should at least eat something before you go."

Lift snatched them from her hand. "You had these the whole time?"

She shrugged. "For emergencies. And if you're going to toy with death anyway ..."

Lift tore off the wrapper of the first one and stuffed it in her mouth. _Good_ didn't begin to describe it. It was full of nuts and nougat and caramel and _chocolate_. Chocolate, slightly melted from being in Knowitall's pocket, which melted further when it touched her tongue. It was the flavor of the Highstorm and distant lands and ancient gods all in one.

There was no time to waste. Lift turned and formed a shardblade in her hand. She cut a hole through the elevator door and on the other side saw a deep pit with a cord hanging in the middle. She could climb down to the prison floor with Wyndle, ignore the elevator and take the stairs ... or she could actually get there in time to make a difference.

She stuffed the second candybar into her mouth—she could _live_ on these things—and jumped into the pit. She grabbed onto the cord, wrapping her arms and legs around it as she slid down to slow her fall. It had worked the night before, but that was with Wyndle. This time, the cord got _hot_. It burned and cut, leaving holes in her pants and blisters on her hands. When she finally hit the bottom, her hands were raw and bleeding.

"Mistress! You're hurt!"

"No, _really_?" She summoned her awesomeness to heal her hand, and in a few seconds it was as good as new. Maybe not the best start, but she had plenty of awesomeness left. Nothing to worry about.

"Mistress, I know you never listen to me when I say this, but please be careful. Even if you can heal someone else's decapitation, you may find reattaching your own head to be more difficult."

She cut a hole through the top of the elevator and hopped down into the box. "You say somethin'?"

"Your friends would be devastated if you didn't make it back."

She stopped, feeling, for the first time since they got here, small. Stealing was supposed to be good, harmless fun, but even if you weren't going to hurt nobody, you didn't always come back. Sometimes you got arrested. Sometimes you got killed. But ... but _storms_, she did not have time for this! If you hesitated right before you jumped, you weren't never going to make it.

"I'll be fine," she said, and she cut a hole through the elevator door onto the prison floor.

Then it exploded.

WWW

A/n And that's a wrap. And by wrap, I mean cliffhanger. You know how the prison break was originally one chapter and then two chapters? Well, now it's three chapters. Um, I'm not doing this on purpose, I swear.

I'd like to thank everyone who has left a comment or a review. I know I haven't been able to reply to all of them, but I appreciate all of them. I'd especially like to thank my s, Sphinxes, Exiled Immortal, and Prime 2.0 for their support.

An extra shoutout to Exiled Immortal for editing the chapter as he has done for the many chapters that came before. I have him basically do my entire fight scenes because when I do it, it comes out looking like a toddler mashing two action figures together. Sometimes a fight scene lasts a few paragraphs. Sometimes, like here, it's more than half the chapter. If you liked the way these fights played out, check out his RWBY time travel fic, Ready or Not.


	10. Chapter 10

Leaf

Chapter Ten

There was thunder as the floor shook, lighting as something bright flashed and then doused the hallway in darkness, and ... something else, something Lift couldn't name that passed through her. It was like a Highstorm contained in an instant that was there and then was gone.

When Lift opened her eyes, the prison floor was as dark as a cave, and even the constant humming in the walls had gone silent. The distinct wrongness about it all gave her goosebumps. She took a deep breath, and even _that_ seemed loud.

She knew she could see if she wanted to. She could light up the whole room like a starvin' champion of righteousness, but she didn't want to invite some crazy skeeve with a sword to chop her head off. She was a thief, and at times like this she trusted her thieving instincts most of all.

She crept silently, following along the wall. She couldn't see Wyndle, but she could hear and feel him when she stepped on his leaves. "Remember where Skullface is?" she whispered.

"Yes, Mistress. Over here."

She followed the sound of his voice as he led her through the labyrinth. Every now and then she had to pause to slick a door open. She saw some light off in the distance, but it didn't look like it came from the lightbulbs they used here or the spheres they used back home. It was orange and flickering like it was coming from a torch, but it was too steady for a torch. A hearth, maybe. Or a furnace.

Lift avoided it. She knew who she was here to steal, and this wasn't the sort of place to wander around. She turned a corner and plunged into pitch blackness once more.

"Right here," Wyndle said. "Cut through where I am right now, and you'll be in his cell."

She nodded and summoned him into her hand. Not a sword for cutting people, just a sword for cutting walls. Walls were alright.

The steel gave way easy as she sliced into it with Wyndle. It was like cutting a great big cake, one with strawberries and frosting and cream filling and ... _focus_. She tried to angle the slab of metal toward her so she could catch it and set it down gently, but it was a chunk of steel as tall as she was and as heavy as a chull. It rang like a dinner bell when she dropped it.

"Who's there?" Brian demanded before the echoes even died down.

Lift lit herself up, just a little, just enough for him to see by. It wasn't smart; Oni Lee was still around and she might need to save her awesomeness for later, but people never felt as scared when they could see. That's why Knights Radiant were always glowing. Brian looked back at her from the darkness he created. He relaxed when he saw her, but just a little.

"Leaf?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

People always asked her that question, no matter how obvious the answer was.

"Well," she said, "I asked myself, 'What's the dumbest thing I could do today?' And here I am."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "You came down to visit me in prison because you were _bored_?"

"No, I ..." She had flaked out of the bank robbery because she was bored. She hadn't expected it to be so hard to make up for that. "I'm here 'cause you're here, and you don't wanna be, so let's get."

He nodded and stepped out through the hole she had made. "What happened to the lights? Power shortage? But this place would have emergency power. EMP?"

"Pee later, we gotta go."

"No, I mean—"

A crash rang out in the distance, followed by the groan of metal. A mad din of noises echoed through the hallways that made Leaf want to cover her ears.

"What was that?" he whispered.

"Trouble, prob'ly," she replied. "Oni Lee is down here too, lookin' for Lung. Like I said, this ain't me bein' smart. Knowitall and the others already clevered outta here, so let's be real quiet, huh?"

With her light dimmed, she took his hand and began following the wall back to where she had come from. As they crept along she became aware of a low rumbling and scraping that seemed to be getting louder. She placed her hand on the wall and felt it rattle beneath her fingers. The rhythm went _SLAM scra-a-ape, SLAM scra-a-ape_, like something heavy being dragged.

"Do you feel that?" she whispered.

"Yeah. Be ready for anything."

They moved faster now. Soon there was just one last door between them and the hallway to the elevator ... one last door with a red glow peaking between the cracks. Brian grabbed Lift's shoulder and pulled her back.

A single massive claw burst through the door, revealing fire, fire so bright Lift could barely make out the form within it. The heat alone seared her face like an oven, and then another shot forward, swiping at them as they scrambled backwards. The head came out last, wreathed in flame and with burning eyes. The split mouth opened up, glowing like a volcano, and roared.

Lung crawled forward with his two elongated arms, cutting into the steel flooring and making it burn gold. His neck was nearly as long as his arms, stretched out like an eel, and the rest of his body was so big that even if his legs had grown back, he wouldn't have been able to stand straight. He pulled himself through the doorway, and he had grown so big that he barely fit.

Brian threw a cloud of darkness at him, enough to smother the light, if not the heat. He took Lift by the hand and ran.

"I guess the elevator's out," he said. "Stairs it is."

WWW

Shadow Stalker found a group of ABB gang members standing outside the PRT building. There was a truck crashed in the middle of the lobby. Strange. There were only supposed to be the Undersiders.

She ignored them and phased through a window. Inside, she saw the PRT's finest doing what they did best: screwing up and taking up space. Some of them were even stuck with their own foam while the rest were gathered around someone by the elevator.

It turned out to be little Vista, covered in blood. On anyone else that would have looked badass, but it made her look like she had tried to eat a plate of spaghetti as messily as possible. "In twenty words or less, what's the situation?"

Vista pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked at her. "Don't know. Got knocked out."

Shadow Stalker grit her teeth. "Typical."

"Hey! There were four of them and one of me! I'd like to see you do better!"

"You knew that going in. If you couldn't handle it, you should have stayed downstairs. Can anyone who was _awake_ tell me what's going on?"

"I can," one of the PRT troopers volunteered. "We were attacked by the Undersiders gang, and we were holding the ground as best we could. Vista here was able to reinforce us until—"

Shadow Stalker cut him off. "Skip to the present." What was this, story hour? Though ... she might want to hear that story later. Vista wasn't just covered in blood; she was lying in a pool of it. Shadow Stalker knew how much blood someone could live without, and there _had_ to be a corpse nearby. What had happened? Did one of Hellhound's dogs want a snack? But the trail of blood drops went to the elevator where a mutant dog couldn't fit.

"Oni Lee of the ABB and Leaf of the Undersiders went downstairs, we assume to free their imprisoned members. The rest of the Undersiders already left."

Vista looked up. "Oni Lee was here? What did I _miss_?"

"It's for the best," Shadow Stalker said. "You wouldn't have lasted five seconds against him anyway."

A few of the troopers' postures grew tense, as though they were offended that she'd say something like that to the team mascot, but Shadow Stalker ignored them. Oni Lee. He wasn't too much trouble by himself, not to her. He couldn't cut through her shadow state so she just needed to stay away from his grenades. Of course, she couldn't take him down with anything less than a lucky shot, so that was a stalemate waiting to happen. But if he was working with Grue, that could be trouble, and if you threw Lung into the mix ...

Wait. "They're working together, then?"

One of the troopers shook his head. "No. We can confirm that they are not."

Oh. _Oh._ That could work. If Oni Lee was as stab-happy as people said, then she could get the job done with tranquilizers. She wouldn't even be breaking the rules.

"I'm heading down there," she said. "Do whatever you want, just don't get in my way."

WWW

Brian didn't need to look over his shoulder to know that Lung was close. He didn't need to see the monster clawing his way through the halls on those elongated arms, or hear him cursing in a mouth that could no longer form words. He could _feel_ him. The man was a forest fire, and he would roast them alive before he got close enough to touch them.

He looked back anyway.

It didn't take much for the memory to sear into Brian's mind. Lung's movements were uncanny, crawling with the desperate ineptitude of a cripple but as indomitable as a force of nature. There was little in his form that was still human with his metallic scales, warped proportions, and burning eyes, and his head had shifted into something that was almost catlike. And that _neck._ He was like ... like a flaming, spring-headed Jack-in-the-box, straight out of the Stephen King version of hell.

And Lung was faster than him.

Not faster than Leaf, though, who was sliding on her knees, slapping at the floor like she was paddling with her hands. It bothered him that he was the one slowing _her_ down. It bothered him more that she had rescued him at all. After losing everything that he had been working toward since he became a villain, escaping now seemed almost trite.

But he'd face it all when he got out of here, and put together what pieces of his life he had left.

Lung was effectively blind and deaf now. Brian maintained a cloud of darkness behind him as he ran, and Lung was forced to move through it, finding his way forward by touch alone. Lung emanated a mechanical grinding noise that Brian took to be a growl of frustration. Then the flames around him burned brighter, and Brian had only a moment to panic before what happened next.

"Take cover!" he shouted.

Brian grabbed Leaf and hurled them both around a corner into an intersecting hallway. A massive gout of flame filled the space they had just been. He felt burned on the back of his neck and down his back, and he felt like his prison uniform had nearly caught fire.

The two of them held their breath as Lung continued to charge blindly past, his bulky body sliding across the floor, trailing two stumps where the legs had once been. The only light in the room came from Leaf, glowing as her own minor burns healed. In a moment he was gone, but still heading toward the stairwell they needed for their escape.

And once Lung got there, once he emerged from the edges of Brian's darkness, he'd know that the two of them were still back _here_. Would Lung continue on to safety, or would he come back and finish them off?

He hoped Lung would just leave, and maybe clear a path through the heroes on his way out, but he wouldn't bet his life on it.

"Leaf," Brian whispered. He didn't need to whisper with Lung on the other side of his darkness, but he felt better keeping things quiet. "You might have to use your sword to get us out of this."

Leaf peered into the darkness, even though she couldn't see through it like he could. "He still ain't got no legs. Whadda you want me to do, chop his arms off too?"

"If you can." _Or his head._ He could do it, and more easily than she could. If he borrowed her sword, he could blind Lung, cut him down, and then they'd have nothing to worry about ... besides a teleporting suicide bomber, an unknown number of heroes, and the PRT ready to pin a murder charge on him.

"Can't do that," she said. "How would he poop? He'd need someone else to wipe him. I can't condemn some poor scowler to a life of wiping Lung, can I?"

"_What_? You can't be _serious_ here."

"'Sides, Wyndle don't like chopping up people unless he has to."

_This is no time for your bleeding heart!_ he wanted to say. But if it weren't for her bleeding heart, he'd have been found dead in an alley weeks ago, stabbed by Shadow Stalker. Could he really press her on this now, just because it benefited him?

Well, yes, because the situation was completely different and Leaf was being an idiot. But before Brian could argue the point, a man wearing a demon mask appeared in front of him.

Right. Oni Lee.

Brian punched the man on reflex and barely sidestepped his sword. Oni Lee stumbled backward a few steps, but another one appeared behind Leaf, ready to take off her head. Brian's heart skipped a beat, but Leaf ducked just in time, turned to face her attacker, and formed a silver rod in her hand.

Not wanting to give Oni Lee the chance to teleport away, Brian flooded the space around them with his power. He charged through the defenses of the older clone, avoiding his sword, and punched him so hard the clone _popped_ into a cloud of white dust. Behind him, Leaf yelped as she suddenly went blind and deaf, and waved her rod around trying to find something worth hitting. Oni Lee was doing the same thing, swinging his sword through the air, but Leaf's rod was longer. When she found something human shaped, she swung again and again until she brought Oni Lee down.

He didn't pop, Brian realized. This was the real Oni Lee, trapped in his darkness. Brian was about to tackle him and do whatever it took to keep him down when Oni Lee pulled out a detonator and pressed the button.

_Boom._

A massive explosion went off, knocking Brian off his feet. He wasn't dead. His ears rang and his head spun, but he _was not dead_. He wiped dust and bits of concrete from his eyes and looked around. Lift was in decent shape, if a bit dazed, but Oni Lee was nowhere to be found. _Crap._ The blast must have blown away his darkness, and any second now the man was going to appear right behind him and chop his head off.

Instead, Lung came back. With an inhuman roar Lung emerged from the last wisps of darkness, somehow even bigger than before. Brian grabbed Leaf and began running again. He darted though the smallest doors and narrowest hallways whenever he could, hoping more to slow down Lung's pursuit than finding the most direct route out.

He stumbled across the wreckage of a recent explosion. It looked like where Oni Lee had planted his most recent bomb. Water was leaking through, and it smelled like a sewer. He hurried through, trying not to slip, and _finally_ made it to the stairwell.

_Almost there._ He filled the bottom floor with his power as they charged up the stairs. Even if the heroes recaptured them, at least they wouldn't be killed by Lung and Oni Lee. Even if they weren't yet free, they were _almost_ safe.

Then a crossbow bolt blurred past him and struck Leaf in the chest. His younger teammate cried out in surprise. He looked up and couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or cry.

"You?" Brian demanded. "_Now_?"

Two levels up and on the other side of the stairwell, Shadow Stalker looked down at them, reloading her crossbow. A crash from below reminded him that Lung was still after them. _Crazy psycho above us, enraged dragon monster below us. What a day._

He threw a cloud of darkness at Shadow Stalker to blind her and ran. Leaf plucked the bolt from her chest and began scrambling up the handrail beside him like a squirrel on a branch. She was swaying a little and still glowing; the bolt had been a tranquilizer, he realized, and her powers were still fighting it. As they ascended Shadow Stalker began firing more shots blindly, and eventually she'd get a lucky hit in.

He caught up to her and ran through her as they passed. There was a trace of resistance there, like she was made of cobwebs instead of mist. His power made her more solid than she usually was, and if he had the time he could have pummeled her incorporeal form until she was too worn out to fight. That was how it had gone down the first time they had met. This time, though, he was in a hurry.

Shadow Stalker went solid right afterward and spun around to fire a bolt that would've caught him for sure if Leaf hadn't formed a silver shield to block it. Not even knowing whether she'd hit him or not, Shadow Stalker phased through the stairs to the floor below to get out of his darkness and jumped back up again somewhere else.

A moment later the landing she'd been standing on disappeared as a clawed arm smashed right through it. Lung ascended the stairwell, crawling up one side of it like a ladder. Entire staircase bent and groaned under his weight as he pulled himself up, tearing out pieces of the wall as he ascended.

Brian pumped more of his power at Lung to prevent him from aiming any fireballs, but this gave Shadow Stalker enough of an opening to clear his darkness and land just ahead of him. He couldn't blind her now, not without affecting Leaf as well, and in these circumstances that could easily be fatal to his teammate.

"Imagine my surprise when they told me you were still alive," Shadow Stalker snarled. "Ruined my whole week, Grue. I think I'll let Lung have a go at you this time. See if you come back from _that_."

She raised her crossbow but Brian wasn't about to make it easy for her. He ducked as she pulled the trigger, leaving a silhouette of his darkness in his place to mask his movements. Closing the distance, he swung his fist at her in a move that should have caught her right under the chin. Instead she phased through the attack, grabbed him by the neck, and slammed him against the railing, trying to wrestle him over and into a fiery death. There was a glint of silver and she abruptly released him as Leaf took a swing at her with a shiny rod.

"Get outta here!" Leaf shouted at him. "If you stick around you'll be dinner for the big guy! That's what she wants!"

It was true, Brian realized. Shadow Stalker didn't even need to beat him herself; all she had to do was slow them down long enough for Lung could catch them. They didn't have time to fight.

"What about you?" Brian demanded. Abandoning her was not an option, not after everything she had done for him.

"I'll be right behind you! Just go!"

Brian clenched his fists. As much as he hated to admit it, he was the one slowing them down. If Leaf took the time to hold back Shadow Stalker, she'd have a better chance of getting out of here if she didn't have to wait for him. Besides, the girl could shrug off a tranquilizer more quickly than he could. Running felt cowardly, but it made sense. He turned to leave.

"You better be!" he shouted over his shoulder.

He resumed running up the stairs as quickly as he could. He expected Shadow Stalker to float up through the floor in front of him to harry him some more, but she stayed down with Leaf. He heard a screech of frustration from Shadow Stalker, followed by the sounds of combat from both of them, and finally the hot crackling of fire from Lung. When he glanced down, all he could see was the rising column of smoke, stinging his eyes and filling his lungs. Smoke killed more people than fire did, and if he didn't get to the exit soon he'd pass out. He pushed himself, coughing and wheezing further upward and deeper into the smoke until he burst through the doors to the lobby.

There was a PRT trooper right outside waiting for him.

The trooper pointed his containment foam sprayer at him on reflex, and it should have ended right there while Brian was still trying to clear the smoke from his lungs. But the man ... hesitated. Maybe the smoke obscured Brian more than he thought and the trooper didn't want to risk foaming Shadow Stalker, though the prison uniform should have been a dead give away.

Brian didn't question his luck; he shrouded the man in darkness, knocked him down, and ran toward the exit without looking back.

WWW

If you knew what someone was having for dinner, you knew what to steal from them. Brian, for example, liked respect. He ate it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and if he didn't get his daily serving, he got grouchy. Shadow Stalker, as far as Lift could tell, ate the souls of the damned, and she looked real grumpy when Brian ran away.

"You really think that you can stop me?" she said, looking up at Lift from a lower step. No, she was _facing _Lift, but she was looking up at Brian.

"Nope," she said, holding her shardrod in her hand. "I'm pretty sure you're just gonna walk right through me."

Lift considered a plan, or at least the start of one. _Would that even work? _Wyndle said in her head. _I have no idea! I'm a gardener, not a scholar! I barely understand the rules of our world, let alone this one._

Shadow Stalker waited until Brian was exactly one level above them then jumped, turning all wispy as she floated upward. Lift jumped and swung, and although Shadow Stalker could phase through steel, she couldn't phase through Wyndle. The shardrod hit her so hard she still went through the stairs below instead of the ones above.

Then Lung started an earthquake, shaking the walls below. The stairs beneath her gave way, sending her tumbling down onto the same level as Shadow Stalker, and everything went black.

It took her a moment to realize that she had landed in a patch of Brian's darkness. She crawled out—and found Shadow Stalker pointing a crossbow at her.

"I put a bolt through your head the night I met you, and you're still here," she said. "You've got bullet holes in your shirt, but you're still kicking. I'm guessing that shooting you again won't make much of a difference."

Lift got to her feet and forced herself not to pant. "Nope," she said. It was a bluff, and a costly one at that. She could hold her breath until she got hungry, looking completely relaxed the whole time, but she didn't have much left before she was out. Her awesomeness never lasted as long as she expected it to, and a couple of candy bars could only get her so far.

Shadow Stalker holsted her crossbow and cracked her knuckles. "Fine by me. I like punching people more than shooting them anyway."

Well, if she wanted to punch her, Lift was going to keep her as far away as possible. She swung at her, and when Shadow Stalker caught the rod she dismissed it, resummoned it, and jabbed her in the stomach.

"What's with the stick?" she said with a grunt. " I have entire departments of suits breathing down my neck every hour of the day to get me to play nice. What's your excuse?"

She shrugged. "More fun this way. 'Sides, my imaginary friend don't like hurtin' people."

Shadow Stalker paused. "I'm going to enjoy killing you _so_ much. Maybe even more than Grue."

"Might wanna get in line then. I'm everyone's fav—"

_Mistress, look out!_

Lift leapt forward right over Shadow Stalker's head just before a fiery claw smashed their section of the stairs completely. Shadow Stalker wasn't so lucky. The stairs closed on her legs like metal jaws and she _screamed _for a split second before turning into a shadow. The claws sank into the wall as Lung pulled himself up from below.

Shadow Stalker was crouching on what was left of the stairs, not getting up. Lift wasn't sure if she _could, _and she didn't have enough awesomeness left to heal her. That left only one option. She summoned a shardrod, a longer one, and offered it to her.

"Grab on!" she shouted. "I'll flip you up, like a pancake!" Brian was probably gone by now, and Shadow Stalker didn't seem fit to chase anyone.

Shadow Stalker didn't respond, and her expression was unreadable. There wasn't even an expression to be read. Lift could make out the bones beneath her skin, and her eyes almost seemed to glow like a cat's, but the rest of the face was a dark blur. Maybe she was too hurt for Lift's plan to work, or maybe she just really hated pancakes.

Alright, that left only one _dumber_ option. She grabbed the railing for balance and slid down, passing by Lung's big ugly face. His face wasn't any easier to read than Shadow Stalker's, not having any human parts left, but she liked to think he was surprised to see her wave at him.

_Always keep 'em surprised. Gives you time to get away. _That's why the dumb ideas were sometimes the best ones.

And sometimes they were just bad. Lung swung a claw after her and ripped a large section of stairs out of the wall. Storms, he ripped a large section of the _wall_ out of the wall. He dropped a few levels, then plunged one arm into the wall to arrest his fall. He then swiped at her with his free claw again and again while Lift ducked and dove and slid under each attack.

Lung couldn't hit her. She was too small, two fast, and too lucky, but the stairwell itself had taken more than it could handle. The whole thing began to collapse on itself, raining down metal planks and bars. But this was nothing. She got worse storms than this every week back home, and if you ran between the drops you never even got wet. Practically in freefall, Lift slid down falling chunks of stairs, flinging herself from one to the other on her way to the bottom.

There was a rhythm to this, a music to each motion that guided her. Everything around her had its own course to follow, to fall, to bounce, to crash, to fall again. Only Lift could see the song being sung around her, and when there was music, there was the _dance._

Moments before she hit the bottom Lift turned Wyndle into a long pole, like the one they'd used to break Lisa out, and jammed it into the floor at an angle. Lift slid down the rest of the way at an angle as the pole fell against the wall, then slid even further on her back. The floor was covered in filthy water, but she didn't splash. The water couldn't slow her down any more than the air could. Lung landed moments after she had gotten out of the way, hitting the ground like a meteorite. He lunged after her as the stairwell caved in behind him. There would be no getting out that way anymore.

"Oh dear," Wyndle said. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. All that and we're back where we started!"

"Yup," she agreed. "His obsession with me ain't healthy for neither of us. If he just focused on leavin', he might be free by now. Who knew that he'd be the type to hold a grudge?"

She slid forward on her knees again through the now familiar prison floor. Lung had gotten huge to the point where he couldn't fit through anything easily, so she was faster than him for the moment. Which would be great if she knew where she was going. Even if she could lead Lung away and double around back, the stairs were wrecked and ruined. She could try to cut through so many walls the building collapsed on him, but then it would collapse on her too. Hiding was an option. A death trap, but an option.

Or she could get out the way she got in, through the elevator. Duh.

She ran forward through the darkness, following Wyndle. Being slick didn't use up as much awesomeness as healing people, but she was so low and she didn't want to be caught without. When she was out of awesomeness she was out, but when she was tired she could push herself a little bit more. And it _was_ only a little bit more, only a little bit further as Lung smashed through walls behind her and boiled the water he crawled through. Just a little bit further.

And then she made it. She felt the perfectly smooth hole in the elevator door that she had cut through and climbed inside. She didn't know how to make it work or even if it would still work after everything had happened, and she didn't have time to try. Wyndle grew into handholds that she could use to climb up through the top hole, and then far above her, far, _far_ above her at the end of the shaft, she saw a light.

_Almost there._

Wyndle grew back and forth along the wall, and Lift climbed upward toward the light.

"Hey, Wyndle," she said, climbing him like a ladder.

"Yes, Mistress?"

"You ever hear the story about Wild Torik and the Well of Lies?"

"I can't say I have. Is this relevant?"

"Could be," she said, pulling herself upward. It seemed a lot further up than it had been going down. "So Torik gets stuck in this well, and finds a voidbringer down there."

The well was a prison in the version she had heard years ago. The village didn't have a real one, so they dropped people down the hole until they could deal with them.

"And the voidbringer wants to eat his soul 'cause he's hungry, but Torik tricks him. Tells him that he's a voidbringer too, and a bigger and fiercer one than he is."

Voidbringers were always disguising themselves as people in stories, but Lift had met real voidbringers. All you needed was a voidspren, and a voidbringer could look the same as a Knight Radiant.

"And Torik knows all the right words, so the voidbringer believes him and thinks that he's this big voidbringer prince."

_Yelig-nar, oh shapeless scourge, forgive me for I knew thee not. The form you wear, a skinned disguise, for ruin better wrought. _

"But when he stops looking, Torik tries to run, and the voidbringer realizes that he's been lying the whole time."

_Would Blightwind flee from his servant so? I think not, son of man. I believed your lies, oh false Unmade, until the moment that you ran._

The sound of ripping metal echoed through the shaft. Lung again.

"Then the voidbringer eats him."

"Ah," Wyndle said. "So it is relevant."

Lift didn't need to look down to tell that Lung was setting into the shaft. He'd have to squeeze in tight to fit, but his arms were so much longer than hers it wouldn't take him long to catch up. Maybe she should have fought in the beginning instead of running. She told herself that it was because it was the thieving way to do things, but she was a Knight Radiant too. The first ideal was life before death, but no one ever listened to that one. The Bondsmith used to be a warlord, and the Assassin in White was a Skybreaker now.

But instead she had run, trying to be quick and clever, not wanting to kill anyone until she had no other choice. And here she was, tired and hungry, still climbing out of the well with a voidbringer after her.

She felt the scorching air rising from him blowing straight up, and she could hear the clang and grinding rip as his claws dug into the walls. Just a little bit further for him, and she still had half the way to go.

But when she looked up toward the light, she saw someone looking back at her. Someone small and in green, someone Lift had seen just once before.

_Vista._

WWW

She wasn't going to make it. She had been fast before when Vista had fought her, but Leaf's enhanced speed seemed to have run out, while Lung was still ramping up.

Below her, Lung glowed like hot coals and sticking her head into the elevator shaft felt like opening an oven. For as long as he had been in the city, he had been an A class threat content to rule a few city blocks and the Protectorate had left him alone because he could _not be stopped._

At least, _they _couldn't stop him. But as ridiculous as it sounded, _she_ could. He was practically trapped already, and the walls of the building were saturated with her power. He could tear through half an inch of steel, but if she stretched that out to a foot? To a hundred feet? Then if she shrank the elevator shaft down to nothing, she could hold Lung back for _hours_.

The only problem was Leaf. If she trapped Lung, she'd have to trap Leaf in there with him. People repelled her power, and the further up Leaf got, the more Vista's power pulled away. It took her a moment to refill the space Leaf left behind, but before she could exert any control over it, Lung caught up, rising like a slowly erupting volcano. Vista could control the entire building _except_ the space between those two villains. Lung was so close behind that anything she did to help Leaf would all but guarantee his escape, and anything she did to stop Lung would doom her.

She could stop Lung ... but stopping him would come with a price.

"_If you couldn't handle it," _Shadow Stalker had said, "_you should have stayed downstairs."_

Shadow Stalker wouldn't hesitate. She never did when it came to hurting people, especially when she could get away with it. But following her example was usually the thing _not_ to do. Gallant, on the other hand, would try to save as many people as possible.

How many people was that? Saving everyone was beyond her limits, but she could save all but one of them. All but Leaf.

_It's not like you're important or anything,_ she thought. _Just another villain in a city already overflowing with your kind._ Her memory was a bit hazy, but Vista remembered Tattletale talking about knocking her out if she didn't cooperate and then waking up sometime later with PRT troopers fussing over her. It didn't take a genius to connect the dots. Before that Leaf had struck her as childish beyond even what her age would justify, and she seemed to treat everything like a game.

But it _wasn't_. Life had consequences, and any wrong choice could lead to people getting killed. Over a dozen people had died just this night because of Bakuda, and those were just the ones that had been counted. How many more would there be if Lung got out?

Vista couldn't let that happen, not for the sake of one villain.

Leaf looked up at her as she kept on climbing, and damn it all, Vista made eye contact. Leaf didn't look afraid. She didn't even look _hopeful_. Just expectant, as though she _assumed_ that Vista would do something.

And she did. She squeezed the elevator shaft shut, trapped Leaf with a hellish fire monster, and left her to die. It was the right thing to do.

It wasn't brave, it wasn't kind, it wasn't something she was proud of, but it _was _right. The Undersiders had broken into the PRT building, taking advantage of the chaos as surely as the ABB had. Maybe they hadn't killed anyone yet, but that didn't make them good people, and Vista wouldn't—_couldn't—_risk the lives of countless innocents for the chance to save one criminal.

_Besides,_ she thought, _if our positions were reversed, you'd do the same to me._

She stretched out the distance between them as far as she could, far more than was necessary to keep Lung contained, too far to hear her scream.

_This was the right thing to do._ She knew it, and if she told herself so for long enough, she might even come to believe it.

WWW

Lift stared upward at the opening that had closed. _But ... why? I was good, wasn't I? I __**helped**_ _you!_

_I helped you._

But Vista was gone, leaving Lift in the pit where the only light was from the beast below.

She looked down at him. He had slowed now that she had nowhere left to go, either to savor the moment or because he was cautious. Some folks got fierce when cornered, and he knew what her shardblade could do to him.

She could kill him. She could _kill _him. And he knew it, knew that she could have killed him at any time during the chase, or weeks ago on the first night they fought.

Her eyes watered from the smoke that couldn't get out, and there wasn't much air left, forcing her to use her awesomeness so she wouldn't need to breathe. When it ran out, she'd have a load of other problems.

She needed to end this fast.

"Ain't no way out no more, Lung!" she called down below, a cloud of light escaping from her lips. "And it's a bum deal ya got, 'cause now you're trapped in here with me!"

She let go of Wyndle and summoned him into her hand, not as a sword but as a shield. Thieves didn't leave bodies, and she was a thief to the end.

_Journey before the Destination._

A massive, shelled arm rose up to smash her into the wall, but she slicked herself and the pressure only squeezed her down faster. Her hair caught on fire and her skin burned, but she was almost there.

All destinations were crem, but if her destination was tonight or in a hundred nights, then there was one thing on her journey that she had always wanted to do.

Lung's head shot up to bite her in half. Her shield dissolved into mist then reformed as a sword, which she stabbed into the wall to break her fall. Lung recoiled, and she dropped the rest of the way—to kick him in the face.

Brian had spent so long trying to teach her how to do that. It'd have been a shame if she never did it for real. And this time—the first time, and maybe the last time—she got him right on the nose.

She poured her awesomeness through that nose and into the body attached to it, making Lung slick from top to bottom. His claws slipped out of the wall and nothing he tried to grab onto would hold. Not even the air slowed him down as he fell straight into the depths of the pit.

Lift would have appreciated his descent a bit more, if she wasn't falling with him. She felt the burning heat for a moment as she fell through fire, but soon she felt nothing at all.

WWW

Leaf had told him that she was right behind him, and Brian had told himself that he wasn't going to abandon her.

They had both been wrong.

Brian watched the PRT building from a nearby alleyway, shrouded and unseen, waiting for Leaf to finally make it out, and waiting had always been his own personal hell. He'd happily push a boulder up a hill time after time after time rather than _wait_ for someone else to make his life better.

He thought about rushing back in and fighting hero and villain alike until he got to her, but he couldn't. If he had escaped on his own he could do what he liked, but Leaf had risked everything to get him out of there. He couldn't throw everything away on a fool's errand, not after that.

But he couldn't leave either, not as long as there was a chance that she would make it out.

She didn't, but Lung didn't either, which cursed him to hope that she still would.

Then the heroes arrived, more than he could fight on his own, more than he could fight with his whole team, and with nothing left to hold him there, he walked back toward the loft.

WWW

It wasn't long before the Protectorate arrived. Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Dauntless, Assault, and Battery, were some of the heaviest hitters on the team, and together they could give Lung a run for his money on his own turf.

Still, it was too much for Vista to hope for to be allowed to take part in the last part of the fight. It was too much to hope for Armsmaster to say anything besides, "Good job," and "Stand down."

But the adults were here, and it was past Vista's bed time.

She wouldn't be able to get to the Wards HQ for a while now which meant that she couldn't spend the night here and the only clothes she could change into would be oversized.

Before she could get anywhere, she ran into Director Piggot, flanked by two PRT officers.

"Vista," she said. "You look like you've been through hell."

Vista looked down at her costume. Most of the top part was bloodstained, and red streaks of dried blood were smeared across her breastplate. "It's not mine," she said. "I woke up like this."

The Director narrowed her eyes at her for a moment. "I see. Well, in any case, good job. You prevented Lung from escaping, and did far more than we could reasonably expect from you."

Vista blinked. Was this undiluted praise from _Piggot_? That _never_ happened, not to her, not to anyone, not in all the years she had been a hero. And of course it happened now when no one on her team was around to see it.

But before Vista could say anything, Piggot continued. "Now report to Master-Stranger isolation."

Her jaw dropped. "W-what?"

"You lost consciousness in the presence of a known Master, did you not?"

"I ..." _Regent._ "Yes, technically. But I haven't been _Mastered_. I know this week's password and everything. It's ... hold on, it's Martin Delta one-one-five."

"Then this should be nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Now go."

The two PRT troopers escorted her to a holding cell where she would spend the next few hours or even days under constant surveillance while being questioned and examined. Vista knew that it was a precaution, but she couldn't help feeling like she was being punished.

_But I didn't do anything wrong._

WWW

Wyndle knew how spren died. His kind couldn't die through violence or time like humans could. He could only die if Lift broke her oaths, and she had kept hers to the end.

Only ... it wasn't the end. The Nahel Bond was still intact, and so his anchor to the Physical Realm was still alive. By some miracle she had retained enough Investiture to survive her fall. Lung had been left hopelessly buried beneath her as she lay unconscious atop the rubble, insensate and undisturbed. At least, until Oni Lee had appeared.

"Mistress! Mistress, wake up! Please wake up!"

_Slosh ... slosh ... slosh._

"Oh Mistress. It's a miracle he hasn't taken your head off, but I don't think he means to help you. Where do these sewers lead? What am I to do?"

_Slosh ... slosh ... slosh._

He couldn't significantly affect the Physical Realm on his own, and as he followed Lift being carried unconscious by an enemy, there was nothing he could do but scream.

WWW

A/N Alright! This chapter has gone through more changes than I can count. And not just minor tweaks, but complete rewrites. Heck, the prison arc has gone through more changes than I can count. In some versions the whole team got captured, everyone but Lift got captured, everyone got out but Lift and Vista got captured by the ABB, etc., etc. A huge thank you to Exiled Immortal for helping me unmess this mess, and he honestly ended up writing so many massive chunks of this chapter that sometimes it felt more like I was editing his story than the reverse.

I'd also like to thank my Patrons, Exiled Immortal, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Kelsey Bull, Hubris Prime, and Apofatix for their support. Finally, thank you to everyone who has left a comment or a review letting me know what you think.


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